We define app engagement on Facebook as adding apps shared by friends, playing game apps with friends, and suggesting apps to friends. Even though some Facebook apps are only for personal use, our definition emphasizes app engagement with friends. As with tagging, most of the research on apps has primarily emphasized the negative privacy implications instead of the social benefits of app usage. We could not find any studies that focused on the social benefits of using apps. However, we found a number of studies that focused on app privacy issues. For instance,King, Lampinen, and Smolen (2011) revealed that most users do not understand how apps work, what information they can access, or how they are authored and reviewed. Besmer and Lipford (2010b) found that this resulted in Facebook app users revealing more personal information than they desired to applications. Wang and her coauthors (Wang, Xu, & Grossklags, 2011; Wang, Grossklags, & Xu, 2013) have studied different privacy authorization dialog
designs in order to understand users’ privacy behaviors and perceptions when choosing to install Facebook apps.
One common theme across these studies is that they all focus on an individual’s understanding of apps and his personal privacy decisions regarding app usage. These researchers do not focus on the often unintentional confidant disclosures made by friends who use apps. Additionally, they do not explore whether SNS users have a clear understanding of how their friends can share their personal information with third-party apps. We expand upon the current
research in two ways: First, we study some of the potentially positive outcomes of app engagement on overall Facebook use; and second, we focus on the privacy implications associated with app engagement with friends.