I’ve always been a person to live in moment; I’m not one for planning ahead. In many aspects of my life that philosophy as worked wonderfully, however in other areas it tends to set me back. The reading about Reputation management on social media sites reminds how important it to think twice before I put things online. There have been countless times I’ve been called into the den to find my dad sitting with my myspace or facebook up on the computer screen. As he would question me about a certain “inappropriate” thing on my page, I would be sitting there thinking to myself why does he care so much? It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized why he cared so much and that I should probably start caring as well. I always tried to explain that it was an inside joke, or a song, or one of those times “you just had to be there” to think it was funny; he never really bought it. When I first came to college I began to monitor my facebook because my sorority made me. Now however, I am a senior and will soon be applying for real jobs in the real world. And just like my dad, my future employers are not really going to care how funny that inside joke was.
In the article Mary Madden is quoted saying, “search engines and social media sites now play a central role in building one’s identity online.” This quote really got me to thinking about how accessible our personal information is available, and in return how vulnerable that really makes us. I was reading several articles related to how employers use social media to access more information about prospect employees. One article said, “it is estimated that 45% of companies research a job candidate on the internet” (Sherman, 2011). That is just under half of all the companies in the US, that is a lot of googling. Another article said “on Dec. 9, 2009, a privacy policy change affecting all 350 million Facebook users made each Facebook user's name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, list of friends and list of "pages" publicly viewable by other Facebook users and also set some users' photo albums to public,” and only through extensive changes to privacy setting is only some of our information private (Jackson, 2010). That means now, more than ever, employers know more information about us than we are a) aware of and b) we would like them. When I first thought about this concept, first off it scared me, but also made me wonder why this is even allowed? By using a social media site to gather information they have access to things they aren’t even supposed to ask you (age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.). Where is the legality in that? On the other hand I guess it’s important to remember that when you post something on the internet you are basically giving your consent for people to look at it. So many people, I’m very guilty of this too, forget that once something is online, it’s there forever. So although, I don’t completely agree with employers using media sites to gather more information, at the same time I have to accept responsibility for posting it.
I was watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU just the other day that involved a “he said, she said” rape case. A risqué photo of the victim is leaked and it threatens the case. That’s when it really hit me; the things we put on the internet have to potential to negatively affect our lives beyond parental disappointment and missed employment opportunities, in the SVU case it made the difference between a guilty and not guilty verdict. Just something to think about.
All this google talk got me to thinking, what would people see when they googled me. I have never been arrested, just a couple of minor speeding tickets, I didn’t think there would be anything that bad. Although there was nothing too bad came up in my search, but then I found something that scared me and is making me rethink my role with social media sites. I found two websites that had very detailed personal information about me, and with a subscription you could access even more details of my life. The first site I went to (pipl.com) had my name, current facebook profile picture, and my address. There was a button that said find more information and when I clicked on it brought me to another site (spokeo.com) that had a list of people who could be “potential” members of my family, my address and how long I lived there, a map of my house and it surrounding areas, and that was the information that could be accessed without a subscription.
Jackson, R. (2010, January 11). Social media permeate the employment life cycle. Retrieved from http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202437746082&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1
Sherman, M. (2011, January 18). Social media research & employment decisions: may be recipe for litigation. Retrieved from http://www.socialmedialawupdate.com/2011/01/articles/social-media/social-media-research-employment-decisions-may-be-a-recipe-for-litigation/
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