It is as bad as it sounds: not only the apologists of this rhetoric believe in the false securities of it themselves, but they aggressively try to persuade everyone what if you don't want to be a nobody or have anything what you don't want to share with a complete strangers, including the government - then you are doing something illegal.
In both situations there is a loss of privacy and autonomy. At some point people just shut down, for the same reasons people behave differently when they know they are under surveillance verses when they think they're not.
*paraphrasing
I think too many people think about "digital security" in isolation, without any human context or considerations of threat profile. Digital security without holistic human security is simply a math exercise.