Finally, our research adds a new dimension when trying to unpack the privacy paradox: confidant disclosures through engaging with friends.We confirmed that Facebook users still have a fairly high level of privacy concern, but it does not translate to their frequency of Facebook use or their emotional attachment to Facebook. Instead, our research suggests that personal privacy is a trade-off many SNS users make so that they can engage with their friends through
Facebook. This theory is supported by our saturated model, which shows that tagging and app engagement with friends mediate the relationship between privacy concern and intensity of use. Past research primarily has focused on the privacy paradox from the perspective of how an individual’s privacy concern is related to his personal information disclosures (Hughes-Roberts, 2013). While some research has related privacy concerns to general SNS nonuse (Baumer
et al., 2013), our model is one of the first that explore how privacy concerns are related to social engagement and/or social withdrawal within SNSs. Future research should explore other mediators or moderators that may further explain the effect of privacy perceptions on social interactions that are mediated by SNSs.