CHICAGO – What's that? A young college grad lecturing her elders about online privacy?

It might go against conventional wisdom, but a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project is adding fuel to the argument that young people are fast becoming the gurus of online reputation management, especially when it comes to social networking sites.

Among other things, the study found that they are most likely to limit personal information online — and the least likely to trust free online services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn and MySpace.

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Mary Madden, the Pew researcher who was the study's lead author, says the findings partly reflect the fact that young people have been using social networking longer than their elders, thus making them more experienced in dealing with its intricacies.

But she says young people also are at a point in their lives where, like McManus, they're looking for work and just starting to develop a name for themselves.

Consider also that the study found that a quarter of online adults said their employers now have policies about how they portray themselves online.

"Young adults have, in many ways, been forced to become experts in their own form of social revision," Madden says.

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