Now of course, you might be saying to yourself, “I don’t have any family on Facebook and I would never be as masochistic as to go to grad school and TA for a 300 person psychology class where someone’s bound to add me on Facebook, let alone end up in a position where I'm going to have lawyer scoping me out so why should I care?” The simple fact of the matter is that if you are employed, applying to school, or have any concerns about future social image, you should care about your Facebook privacy settings. Why is that exactly? Because, at the very least, employers and universities can and do check Facebook profiles of applicants. Is it right? Well, we’ll get to that. Is it a reality? You better believe it.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the article that had originally made me realize the lengths that especially universities will go to when it comes to Facebook. In the particular one that I can no longer find, I believe there were two smaller, religiously-affiliated schools (maybe even Duke?) that ended up revoking admissions from students based on pictures that they had posted on their Facebook pages prior to starting in the fall. These may have been schools that had specific conduct policies that students were supposed to adhere to, but again, I unfortunately can’t remember and can’t find the article (if anyone happens to know what I’m talking about, send it my way). However, I was able to find some other examples of how schools are using Facebook pages to their advantage. Oxford University administrators took a break from afternoon tea to take a jaunt through their students Facebook pages. Not only did they do that, but based on what they found, they even started issuing fines to students:
"After exams, students at the venerable English university traditionally drop their serious ways and indulge in a spasm of "trashings" — rowdy revels that include dousing classmates in foam, eggs and flour.
In recent years, students have taken to posting photos of the mess on Facebook, the popular online social networking site.
Disciplinary officials at Oxford have caught on — and have begun e-mailing students fines of $80 to $200 for breaking campus rules, said Martin McCluskey, president of the Oxford University Students Union."
Source
Another article by the Wall Street Journal reveals that university admissions counselors are more than willing to look at potential students’ Facebook pages. In fact, for some universities, it may even be routine:
"A new survey of 500 top colleges found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged looking at social-networking sites to evaluate applicants. Of those colleges making use of the online information, 38% said that what they saw "negatively affected" their views of the applicant. Only a quarter of the schools checking the sites said their views were improved, according to the survey by education company Kaplan.
... Some admissions officers said they had rejected students because of material on the sites. Jeff Olson, who heads research for Kaplan's test-preparation division, says one university did so after the student gushed about the school while visiting the campus."
Source
None of this was much of an issue when I was applying for college because Facebook was mostly limited to college students who had already been admitted (since you already had to have a college email address to register), but I probably didn’t think about it as much as I should have when I applied to grad school. Could it have affected my admissions in certain places? Probably. Did it? The world may never know (like how many licks it takes to get to the center of Tootsie pop). For me, of course, the point is inevitably moot because I ended up somewhere that I was happy with and have a good working relationship with my advisor who is pretty open about anything personal that would have shown up on my Facebook (the man puts HRC equality stickers on anything and everything in the lab). This isn’t to say, though, that you should assume that everyone will be that way. In fact, they’re probably not.
I have to say that even I’m guilty of having looked up undergrads on Facebook who were applying for a job in the lab. To me it was just a bit of extra “time” with them in a way and didn’t really influence my opinion at all (though there were some that I thought would fit better personality-wise in the lab but professional experience was more important). However, there was one applicant that I absolutely turned down on the spot after seeing her Facebook page. This had nothing to do with the content located in it, but reminded me of my personal interactions with her. I had found her to be fairly obnoxious and irritating in person but didn’t actually know her name until I saw her Facebook page. As soon as I saw that, she was done.
Keeping all of that in mind, let’s backtrack to my interaction with the lawyer on my flight. She said that the first thing that she would do when taking on a new case would be to look up the defendant on Facebook and that had let quick calls to the opposing counsel to talk about a settlement (presumably due to incriminating evidence). Universities are obviously using Facebook to check on their students. The question then should be, is it appropriate for schools or employers to, in a way, intrude on the personal lives of their students and employees? The answer is that there’s no easy answer. Ha! How about that evasion? Here’s why: On the one hand, if you’re stupid/willing enough to broadcast everything about your life into a public forum, you have to be ready to accept the consequences. On the other hand, people have always had a life outside of work or school that their employers didn’t know the details of which wasn’t in any way fundamentally changed simply by the existence of Facebook (i.e. people were going out to bars and getting hammered long before Facebook came along). The only difference is that now employers can potentially gain access to that information through the internet, if they’re so inclined. But should they be?
While I’m barely in a position to be able to think about checking up on potential hires through Facebook, I have to say that personally if I were an employer I wouldn’t care about what my employees did after hours as long as they were completing their work on time and it wasn’t affecting my business. If you’re at a point where, as an employer, you’re wanting to screen for employees that aren’t of a particular ideological affiliation, religious affiliation, of a particular sexual orientation, don’t drink, or don’t do X, Y, or Z, then maybe you can take the liberty to really care about what people are putting on Facebook. Similarly, if you’re a potential employee who gets turned because of one of those criteria, maybe you shouldn’t really want to work for that employer anyway. Yet, that’s only a slight comfort in this day and age when people are looking for jobs in every nook and cranny of the economy.
This ultimately boils down to how “live and let live” an employer should be or wants to be. And unfortunately, that’s nothing that we can control. So, as the peons of the world, it’s best to make sure that your privacy is protected. Plus, why would you want to immediately broadcast that to someone you don’t know anyway? Yes, we should be able to live our lives openly, but at the same time, why would you walk up to someone and give them your whole life’s history? Don’t we usually hate those people anyway? If you want to open your life up to people later, go for it. But for the sake of trying to get into school or finding a job, take the necessary precautions.
Other overt issues of privacy aside, another one of the other major concerns about Facebook is that you should make sure that you stand by what it is that you’re putting up there. Why is that exactly? Because nothing on Facebook ever really goes away. Yes, there’s a limited amount of stuff that you can access on a person’s page at one time, but everything, EVERYTHING is maintained in Facebook’s database. Even if you were to delete your profile, it doesn’t go into the void of the internet. Instead, it goes into a giant Facebook filing cabinet that they still have access to and others could potentially gain access to as well. Certainly, this is not ideal. The fact that we don’t have total ownership of things that we post on Facebook kind of sucks. Yet, given that we’re all Facebook junkies and probably aren’t going to go cold turkey tomorrow for fear of withdrawal, it’s necessary to just be aware of everything that you’re putting out there for the world to see. If you’re willing to post it for the world, make sure it’s something that you’re going to be able to stand behind. We all draw ideological lines in the sand. This isn’t news. However, if you aren’t willing to hold the line, then don’t put yourself in a position where you have to and keep it neutral. On the other side of it, if you’ll fight to the death for what it is that you have to say, then have at it.
However, all may not be so doom and gloom with Facebook in the near future. Because of pressure not only from users but even from Congress, Facebook and other social media sites are having their privacy practices put under a microscope. Due to the pressure, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has issued some statements regarding privacy controls on the site:
"Mr. Zuckerberg, in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, admitted the social network had sometimes "missed the mark" with its privacy controls and would take steps to make it easier for users to manage their personal data on the site.
... Facebook will "add privacy controls that are much simpler to use," Mr. Zuckerberg said. He added the company will also allow users to turn off all third-party services. He didn't elaborate on what such services are, but they could include games and functions that let Facebook interact with other websites.
... In the opinion piece, he said the company is learning as it goes. "Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted," he wrote."
Source
So, there you go. Social media isn’t going to go away. In this age of technology, it will surely keep evolving and morphing, but these are issues that we’re all going to have to keep dealing with. Enjoy your social media and make it work for you. Just remember – user beware!
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