Keep in mind that I am by no means representative of the younger generation since I'm a really techy guy in Silicon Valley who is very much plugged into startup

Keep in mind that I am by no means representative of the younger generation since I'm a really techy guy in Silicon Valley who is very much plugged into startups, etc. The fact that I frequent HN makes me much different than 99% of 16 - 21 year olds. I do feel like most people my age do not care about privacy. I obsessively use and tune all the FB privacy controls, but I feel like most people don't know about them. The appeal of pseudonyms on Tumblr has more to do with aspiration than privacy, I think. A lot of people younger than me (who I've FB stalked!) who use Tumblr use it like they use Pinterest: basically a collection of aspirational images. For example, a 16 year old guy might have a Tumblr that's full of pictures of sports cars, beautiful women, exotic locations, music artists that he likes, etc. There is certainly no actual blogging, because that requires lot's of writing. They'll typically have a tumblrID that has less to do with their name, and more to do with their identity. So someone who plays sports might have a tumblrID of "sportsguy123" (you get the picture).