The 2000 Surgeon General’s Report remarked that in the midcentury, “[i]t was hard to imagine that a habit so widespread, so apparently normal, so integrated into American culture…could turn out to be fundamentally destructive.” The Report was referring to smoking, but it could just as easily have referred to contemporary data habits. Americans today regularly give companies vast quantities of personal data while using few privacy precautions, failing to understand how these data-collecting technologies and services—like smoking—can be “fundamentally destructive.” The choices of which technologies we use and how we use them can affect the privacy rights of people with whom we interact, much in the same way that secondhand smoke imperils the health of those around us.

The comparison is imperfect. Poor data habits do not have the former social cachet of smoking. The use of many products and services that collect data are also likely more necessary and more valuable to people’s lives than cigarettes. Thus, unlike with smoking, the goal with respect to data habits is not to eliminate the use of these technologies, but to use them in ways which better protect our personal data and that of those around us.

The social pressure and networking effects of social media platforms and other data-collecting services create deeply ingrained cultural incentives to use them and use them in the same manner as our peers. In light of the similarities between Americans’ smoking habits in the 1960s and their data habits today, the anti-smoking efforts of the twentieth century may serve as a good model for changing the culture around data privacy.

A Culture of Smoking

While nicotine addiction undoubtedly played a role in the slow decline of cigarette consumption, the social norms around smoking were key to its continued prevalence. For decades, pervasive marketing campaigns fueled the popularity of cigarettes. The regular appearance of cigarettes in media, as well as their real-life consumption by celebrities, established smoking as a cultural norm. The increasing affordability of cigarettes made the habit available to a wider population. During wartime, smoking became a popular diversion and coping mechanism among soldiers. This confluence of factors created a culture of smoking incapable of being dismantled by one strategy alone. Only through a combination of economic incentives, legal tactics, and media changes were a cultural shift and ultimate decline in smoking rates made possible.

Economic Incentives

Legislation like the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 obliged companies in the 1970s to foot the bill for rising health care costs. This created new economic incentives to support workplace practices which would reduce their employees’ health risks. Insurance companies developed further incentives by offering discounted policies to nonsmokers. For some, these economic pressures were more compelling than the risks to their health.

As with smoking, economic pressure rather than personal risk may better motivate change. Data privacy regulations like the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) impose up to millions of dollars in fines for data privacy violations, and at the very least, these laws alert people the problem. The growing cyber insurance market could offer further financial incentives by offering lower rates to businesses with good privacy practices.

Legal Tactics

Regulations were key to developing economic incentives, but anti-smoking advocates also used the law to more directly combat smoking. In the 1970s, state legislatures began passing bans on smoking in public places. By 1990, public smoking was restricted to some degree in 44 states. In the courtroom, the tobacco industry had previously made successful legal arguments regarding the personal freedom of smokers to smoke. However, lawsuits brought by private individuals combined with new research on the dangers of secondhand smoke led courts bolster nonsmokers’ rights.

Just as the government requires health warnings to be prominently displayed on cigarette packages, legislation could require that privacy risks be prominently displayed on devices and browsers rather than buried in terms of service. By bringing lawsuits under new privacy regulations like the CCPA, private citizens can help create further judicial precedent which holds companies accountable for their handling of the data they collect.

Media

Anti-smoking advocates centered much of their efforts on the tobacco industry’s media presence. The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, passed in 1969, banned cigarette advertising on television and radio. The disappearance of televised tobacco ads corresponded with a change in media itself. The number of cigarettes that television characters smoked in 1982 had decreased ninefold since 1964. Advertisements by anti-smoking advocates used a variety of tactics ranging from humorous satires of famous tobacco ads to emotional accounts of tobacco-related illnesses. Early public health campaigns often focused on children and pregnant mothers, groups who were both at higher risk and likely to raise concern. These changes to cigarettes’ media landscape were crucial to changing their status in the real world.

Awareness and understanding of data privacy issues could come in the form of pro-data privacy media campaigns like those used by anti-smoking advocates. Similarly focusing campaigns on children can help gain the attention of those who otherwise might not care; focusing on how a user’s data habits affect others can help counteract the view that data-collection is purely a matter of personal consent. Similar to changing the number of cigarettes smoked by television characters, privacy campaigns should aim to change the way social media influencers use and talk about data-collecting technologies. Anti-smoking advocates were successful because they were able to change the perception of smoking from a socially-acceptable and glamorous habit to dangerous and amoral practice. Any meaningful change in American’s data habits will require a similar shift in perception.