Privacy? Social Networking? Yeah right!

Let's talk about privacy. Better yet, let's talk about how it rarely exist anymore, especially when dealing with social media. People fail to realize that how you treat someone and what they may say on these social networks could affect the rest of their lives.

It’s been said numerous times that social networks were build upon “networking.” However, not everyone knows exactly how to network or how to differentiate the social from the network. The best way I can describe it is, for example, if you’re logging on to these sites to simply stay in touch with your close friends and family with no intentions on looking up and possible future employers or trying to get your name out in a professional setting, you’re safe. But when you know in your mind that you’re that go-getter who has to meet the next P. Diddy or the legendary Oprah and you have explicit pictures of yourself from the club or maybe a private party, then there may be some precautions you want to take:

1. You may want you create a separate profile if you don't want various companies, clients or organizations seeing your regular profile.
2. If you opt not to create another profile, then at least set up your limited profile (which can be done on any social networking site).

In case you haven’t figured out what privacy has to do with any of this it’s simple. You have none. Everything you say, do or put on any of these social networks, someone has access to it. True enough you may have some people who are on your limited profile, but what about the ones who aren’t? It’s impossible for us to know everyone that they know. The same people we’re trying to hide from may be standing over the desk of someone we aren’t hiding from.

I’m not trying to persuade you to get rid of your social networking sites.

Social Networking: A Gift and a Curse

Social networking is something that we'd like to think of as fun-keeping in touch with friends,family and networking. So with all these great qualities happening in social media, where did these social media sites go wrong?

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are popular among the college generation. Most college students have a social life outside of the classroom. They party, have socials and all-in-all just enjoy having fun. In the midst of all this fun, there's always those few people taking pictures. This could be both a good or a bad thing. It could be a bad thing because, what can be nothing but innocent fun, may end up ruining someone's reputation in a snap of a picture. However, it could be a great thing because if an employer does run across certain pictures and it respresents the employee well, this will show the company that you can have fun and still look presentable at the same time. Meaning, the company won't have to worry about you making them or yourself look back.

Although there's a certain way I believe we should present ourselves to the public, I also believe that those on the outside looking in, shouldn't look in so deeply. How is it that different employers are in such a hurry to find out about our lives, when we know nothing about theirs? Well, it's mainly because companies spend a ton of money to recruit and train emploayees. If companies see that there may be a problem with a employee, most likely these companies won't hire them, which means less money these companies would have to spend.

Even with the whole "privacy setting" on, these sites still aren't fully trusted by their users. Just as someone can hack into your account, I'm sure employers can find ways around the "privacy setting" to gain more information their employees. So in a sense, the little privacy we thought we had just got snatched right from under us.

Social netowrking: What seems to have once been a gift of simple and faster communication just became a curse.