One of the hotter topics in the social networking realm, particularly among younger people, is the importance of using discretion when adding comments, pictures or pretty much anything to sites like facebook or myspace. Even as privacy options improve, it is safe to assume that if you post something to a social networking site, it will find itself in the hands of someone you may never have expected.
Case in point - at a breakfast a few weeks ago my co-workers and I shared a good laugh at a highschool picture of a much younger and thiner me that had been pulled up on facebook. The picture was posted by a high school friend, as a token of remembrance to some good times back in the day - though to the casual onlooker, this snapshot of me getting ready to rip an undershirt apart is rather ridiculous. Obviously I knew the picture was a part of my profile and thus accessible to others, but when it had first been posted, I'd never really considered the possibility that it would show up on the iphone of my supervisor several years later. I don't mind of course - though unexpected and amusingly embarrassing, viewing it with two colleagues invoked a lot of happy memories. It also made me remember why I'm going to start going back to the gym ;-)
But most of the stories popular media locks onto are not nearly as innocuous as mine. Employers finding pictures of new hires swinging naked from a chandelier, parents finding pictures of their kids doing drugs - heck our very own Penn State University Police actually used Facebook to help find students who had been involved on some post game "extracurricular activities" downtown a few years back. In situations like these, the results are far more serious than a few chuckles - sometimes as significant as jail, the loss of your job, or expulsion from school. But in addition to the heavy hitting responses that can come from putting too much of yourself out there, there is also a much more subtle effect of showing too much of yourself - it can change the way people perceive you.
My girlfriend refuses to use facebook. Not because she has any objection to social networking itself, but rather because in her sales/marketing profession, she does'nt want to blend her social life with her professional one. She doesnt do anything scandalous, but pictures of casual drinking, or goofing off with friends are not images she would ever want potential partners to have access too. Most certainly a responsible stance, and in our day in age a reasonably valid one too.
My outlook on the idea is arguably a lot more naive and would probably best be described as indifferent. I am who I am, and I don't feel any need to hide that from anyone who has any interest in associating with me on any level. I could censor out every picture where I'm holding a beer bottle or looking less than professional, but then its not really "myspace" is it? And for what? To present some sort of stale, vanilla-Stub package to someone whos looking to judge me? Sorry ladies and gents, with this cat you get what you pay for =) Thats not to say I'm some sort of martyr for opening all of our lives up to the universe. But if its all the same to you, I don't mind telling you that I enjoy a frosty woodchuck cider from time to time =)
Now on the outside, thats probably a pretty stupid attitude to take, and more than that its hypocritical. My dress, my diction, my humor - it all changes depending on who I'm speaking to in the real world, at least to a certain degree. I wear suits to job interviews. I mind my Ps and Qs when I speak to my Grandparents. I allow high school pictures of me shredding t-shirts to be up on my facebook profile. Huh? Bit of a contradiction isnt it? Yes it is, and one that would probably take me longer to rationalize than you have to read =) Perhaps another day...
But it makes me wonder if there is a change brewing in our culture. If you're 40 today, chances are your childhood was different in a lot of ways than mine was (being 25). And the difference between my childhood and the young whipper snappers of today is just as different. When I was younger, I was connected to the relatively infantile internet, but not perpetually, by that wonderful dial up 14.4 modem. Today, kids are omni-connected at speeds that would have blown my 13 year old mind, from any and everywhere their little lives (and cellphones) take them. When I was young, the boundaries between school and work and home, between personal and private were a lot more clear. Today, things are a lot different.
Today, someone who never grew up with facebook might use it to decide that an applicant just "isnt quite professional enough" because they were tagged in a picture where they had a bit too much to drink. Whether its fair or not is another story entirely - it does happen, whether you like it or not.
But will it be that way forever? What happens when the myspace generation is in a position to do the hiring? What happens when the people who grew up in a world where everyone you knew had everything they did tagged and bagged for public consumption rises into positions of power? Do the rules change? Do we become more accepting of the blurred line between who we are and who we want people to see? Or will the "social internet" just provide endless fuel to the fires of those who seek to judge? Or maybe the divide between the young and old will always exist, regardless of the medium it takes, be it Disco, MTV, or Facebook. I'm not sure I know the answer, but somehow I feel like something is going to change...
I'll leave this overly philosophical post with a quote I've always liked from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
It's an interesting time to be young =)
Image from www.sausage-fest.com
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