(Don’t) Put It In Writing

My brother recently went through a bad break-up, and the first thing I did when I heard about it was happily defriend his ex-girlfriend on Facebook. I recommended that he do the same. While there may be some people who remain friends with their exes both in real-life and in social media, my policy has always been more of the cut your losses and run. Rather than run the risk of jealousy or misplaced drama, I prefer to keep things as cordial as possible by keeping them as distant as possible. Of course, there’s another reason for my reluctance to remain friends with exes of any kind on Facebook, and that’s the possibility of social media disasters.

Talk to your child about how to appropriately use social media, and consider how you use it yourself! (Image Credit:http://www.kidonthebus.com/2010/08/your-child-on-facebook.html)

Now, a social media disaster can come in a lot of forms, but for those of us with fewer than 10,000 followers on Twitter and a meager 400 friends on Facebook, most social media disasters come from relationships gone sour. The one thing almost all social media disasters have in common is that somebody puts in writing something that they shouldn’t have been saying in the first place. Offensive or even mildly offensive comments on Facebook or Twitter, whether they are in private messages or available for anyone to read, can become a serious liability. Maybe you’re upset with your girlfriend and so you post a sexist comment on Facebook, which then gets around to not only your cousins and friends, but also to your coworkers and your classmates. The thing is, by putting comments in writing, even if they’re intended as jokes, you’re opening yourself up to problems. You may lose a friend or a job, start a family feud, or even get the police involved (depending on the level of the comment you’ve made). Part of social media is controlling your image, and so you need to be aware of the things you’re putting in writing. Just because you might say something to a friend doesn’t mean you should post it on your Facebook. I pretend that I now have potential future employers reading every post, which helps me weed out what I should and shouldn’t say.

Instead of posting something on Facebook, why not use the site to set up a meeting with some of your friends? Saying something in person is a lot less serious (or verifiable) than saying something in writing…just make sure that nobody’s wearing a wire at your table!

Social Media Mayhem

I joined social media a little bit later than most of my peers, around the time that MySpace was on its way out and Facebook was on its way in. Initially, I resisted. When I started college, however, it quickly became clear that Facebook was a necessity. I don’t use the term lightly, and my assertion is backed up by a recent Pew Survey that found Facebook users have more real-life friends than non-Facebook users. Shortly after I joined Facebook, it seemed like social media exploded. Blogs, Twitter accounts, Pinterest…the list goes on. And on. And on. Obviously it’s almost impossible to totally keep up with all the new trends. At a recent department speaker series on finding jobs after a graduate degree, one presenter said her best piece of advice was to make a LinkedIn account, a Twitter account, and get a significant professional online presence.

Facebook status update: I feel like somebody's WATCHING me. Weird, right? (Image Credit:http://owni.eu/2011/05/12/e-spying-state-sponsored-intrusion/)

 

I cringed. As much as I like using social media for business purposes (after all, I maintain this blog and a Twitter account, which is admittedly not very active as I’m still trying to figure out the appeal), I hate using it for social purposes. And perhaps my fears are becoming more relevant. A friend who was recently interviewing for a position was asked for his Facebook username and PASSWORD, so that his potential employer could log on to his account and check out what kinds of things he was posting, liking, and what kinds of things his friends were posting and liking. This isn’t an isolated incident, either. More and more employers are requesting this information as part of a standard interview process. While in the past social media users were told to keep accounts private, giving a potential employer free access to your account negates any privacy settings.

It’s enough to make anyone who might ever consider getting any kind of a job cringe. So what do you do? It’s no longer enough to tell people to set privacy settings to their maximum, and it may not be realistic to ask people to disconnect from social media entirely. My friend, luckily, got the job without a problem. While I may have started this post out with the intention of giving some solid advice for social media management, I’ve ended more uncertainly than I began. The only rule I now try to follow is the idea that nothing on my social media sites are private, not matter how strictly my privacy settings are set.

How do you manage your social media presence as monitoring becomes more invasive and pervasive?