As technology advances, online privacy and security become increasingly crucial for people’s experiences on social media platforms. In this paper, we aim to comprehensively analyze and compare the privacy setting preferences on social media platforms between Chinese international students and local US students, both currently studying in the United States. To accomplish the goals, we conducted a comprehensive survey on Chinese international students (n = 15) and local U.S. students (n = 12). This survey involves a detailed quantitative examination of the specific privacy settings chosen by each group on various social media platforms. Then, we conducted quantitative, statistical analysis on collected survey data using plots, and found significant insights into our two primary research goals: identifying patterns and preferences in privacy settings, such as profile visibility, data sharing choices, and friend/connection acceptance criteria; and understanding how these preferences align with or diverge from the general privacy behaviors observed in their respective cultural contexts. Finally, We discuss the findings of our findings, which found limited understanding of privacy tools & settings among both groups, and a more conservative privacy setting choice for Chinese students versus U.S. students. We further discussed the implications of these findings and future directions in the paper.