Snooping in the Digital Age

We've become accustomed to constant surveillance. That may not be a problem if you've got nothing to hide, but a recent poll shows that a large chunk of the country not only has their secrets — they also have the technological know-how to uncover the secrets of friends, loved ones, and coworkers. To get a better idea of how people spy on each other these days and what they find out, AddictiveTips surveyed over 1,000 Americans about their snooping habits.

Key Takeaways

• 42% of people tracked a match from a dating app using Snapchat Maps in the past year.
• 23% of people quit their job because of something they discovered while snooping.
• 41% of people who snooped on their boss listened to their phone calls.

Deep Digital Dive

Partners, colleagues, friends, and kids are all fair game when it comes to digital snooping. Let's look at where and how most of the prying is being done.

Overwhelmingly, friends admitted to prying into the lives of their compatriots. Responses indicate that 57% of people had taken sly looks into their friends' lives, often using social media. About 1 in 3 admitted to checking others' active Facebook status, and nearly as many looked at or read others' phone screens in passing. The more old-fashioned and tactile "going through their phone" method was used by fewer than 30% — no surprise, with so many no-charge digital surveillance options available.

Parents and guardians likely make up another large swath of online peeping Toms: 65% felt it was acceptable for a parent to snoop on their child. That must be why more than one-quarter of parents admitted to recently tracking their child's location without them knowing. Over 50% of respondents also felt that spying on a parent, spouse, or partner was fair game.

Checking up on an ex via outside parties proved irresistible to 1 in 3 respondents. Even more said they'd used Snapchat Maps to track matches from a dating app (42%). Some went so far as to create a fake dating profile to snoop on a roommate or friend (15%). The faithfully married also showed their bias towards snooping, as they were 20% more likely than the unmarried to say it was justifiable to do so on a spouse.

Consequences?

Next, we wanted to know what people found by snooping and what they did with the information. Let's see what respondents uncovered and how they reacted.

Since friends were the most spied-upon category, it's little wonder that the most dirt was dug up on them. In 43% of the snooping cases reported, people uncovered drama among friend groups. Familial drama followed suit, being revealed 41% of the time. Partners and significant others were slightly less likely to find infidelity, which was revealed 31% of the time.

Nearly half of those surveyed chose to keep the secrets and not act upon the information they found. Snooping resulted in confrontation 38% of the time, with women being 16% more likely than men to confront the person whose secret they discovered. Telling only one person came in at a close third, with respondents reportedly doing so in just 37% of cases.

Nosy Co-workers

The stakes may be lower when snooping on friends and family, making them easy targets. Still, co-workers and bosses were just as likely to have their privacy invaded. Next, we'll see what drama ensued from poking around in the workplace.

Of all respondents, 26% admitted to spying on their co-workers, and 16% snooped on their bosses in the past year. Baby boomers were the most likely to say it was okay to snoop on your boss (42%), while millennials were the least likely to feel that way (30%). In doing so, almost one-third of respondents said they discovered a boss's criminal activity. While it seems unlikely to find that kind of dirt on a public social media profile, maybe respondents uncovered it by listening to their phone calls — a tactic used 41% of the time.

Workplace gossip can spread fast these days: 63% of respondents said they have active non-work-related group chats with co-workers, and more than half saying they've used these channels to gossip. When someone has valuable information such as finding out a co-worker might have an edge regarding a promotion, it can be too tempting not to share.

By far, social media was the most common method used to pry into the lives of both bosses and co-workers. And while the second most common snooping tactic used on bosses was checking their active Facebook status (51%), when spying on co-workers, it was glancing at their phone while walking by (44%).

The Smoking Gun

Many have snooped on their friends, family members, partners, and colleagues, saying it's both acceptable and justified. Is it truly an invasion of privacy if the person being spied on put their private information out there themselves? Social media (the number one way people snooped) certainly complicates things. If you send a message out to the world, don't be surprised if those nearest to you hear it loudest.

Since a large portion of snooping was between friends and family, this may spark conversations about better communication. Likewise, parents being honest with their children might go a long way in reducing the need for privacy invasion. And infidelity between partners is a tale as old as time, but yet again, trust and honesty can eliminate the need to secretly spy on one another to find out about it.

Methodology

AddictiveTips surveyed 1,013 Americans about snooping and how it affects relationships. Of these respondents, 546 identified as men, 460 identified as women, six identified as nonbinary, and one identified as something else. For short, open-ended questions, outliers were removed. Survey data has certain limitations related to self-reporting. These limitations include telescoping, exaggeration, and selective memory.

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