I have heard of many stories about posting something online that has come back to bite them in the rear! My last post was similiar to this one...
I watched a video online from CNN about a high school cheerleader being suspended from her sport because of a picture on facebook. It was from her sister's wedding but the picture made it look like she was holding a beer. It seems that one of her friends must have seen it and it fell into hands that then forwarded it to her high school...Her family claims it was not hers, but a friends and they were just taking a picture with their hands linked with one another... now she is devestated because she cannot finish cheering this season. In the video her mom pleads with people to be careful what they post on the internet. Do you guys ever think a lot before you post something on facebook or some other site? Especially as we leave college...It may seem that we have high privacy settings but there are many connections on facebook and nothing is guarenteed to not be seen... Will you change things on your facebook before you look for jobs and are hired?
Obviously most people (including me) think the benefits of facebook (connecting, keeping up with people...) outweigh the cons or possible bad outcomes of using the site. It is something to think about though.
Also- it got me thinking about why people post certain pictures. Are we really trying to "sell or market" ourselves? Is our profile picture the best way to do that? Could the girl have possibly posted the picture or wanted it on her facebook because it makes her look "cool" to have been drinking...
Sometimes I definitely wonder about privacy on Facebook and how safe my pictures are. I know a bunch of people who deactivate their accounts during the graduate school application process and then reactivate them once they've made their decision. I feel like that can be a good idea but I usually just try to make sure that there are no compromising photos or things on FB. I also agree that the benefits outweigh the risks and I think that if you're careful about what you post (and allow your friends to post) and you have your privacy settings set very high...then you're probably okay.
ReplyDeleteI think about this a lot because I think about all of the people I am "friends" with who dont really know me. They have access, for the most part, to what I post. I am extremely careful about pictures and etc just because anyone can misconstrue or get ahold of anything on facebook. I think its smart to have private settings on facebook just so you do not have to worry about a situation mentioned above. Also, a lot of what is posted on facebook may send the wrong message and since many do not have the right context for what was posted, it is easy to misinterpret it.
ReplyDeleteThis is crazy because I was just wen through my facebook and deleted people I dont regularly talk too. Im nervous that something like this could happen. WHich is why my friends on FB still are limited when looking at my profile.
ReplyDeleteI plan to work in the corporate world, and dont want anything like FB to hold me back :/
I used to be a lot more paranoid than I am now about which pictures are tagged of myself and what people post on my wall, but as I've gotten to the point where I use facebook a lot less, I put a lot less time into managing the little parts of my account. When I do log into facebook these days, I usually quickly look at my notifications, messages, friend requests, etc. I usually don't have time to deal with everything I encounter at that time, so I come back later and unfortunately, many times I forget to do some of the things that I mean to do. If a picture is tagged of me in which I look like I'm out on the weekend having a good time, I don't un-tag it anymore whereas I used to. Part of the reason for this is because I'm 22 years old and if nothing else, at least it's legal for me to consume alcohol.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that's a very good point Kayla brought up about deactivating your account while in the Grad School application process. I wonder what else Grad schools would be able to dig up about you on the internet? For example, when I was in 8th grade I used to write in a Xanga all of the time. Since I was so much younger I'm not really worried about it because I wasn't getting into anything that could get me into trouble. However, I wonder how my entries would reflect on me? I think that before anyone gets ready to start applying for jobs and internships and grad schools they ought to do a thorough internet search for themselves and see what they can do about minimizing the amount of information that other people are able to access about them. After all, before the internet this information would never have been available. Do you guys think this puts our generation at a slight disadvantage?