Be mindful of Facebook associations
Adam Dangerfield
Mesa Legend
What’s in your Facebook?
That’s a question I have been asking myself lately. I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a social media butterfly. If anything I’m the opposite, often to the chagrin of friends and family because I rarely, if ever post my latest comings and goings, what I like, what I’m doing, or who I’m doing it with. I was also relatively late coming into the Facebook fold and probably would have never even signed up had it not been a requirement for a position I had way back in 2013.
I guess I initially had an aversion to Facebook for the same reason many non-users do and that is: Why put your private life out there on such a public forum? All marketing data considerations and conspiracy theories aside, why put your business out there? To be fair, the more I got on Facebook and started searching for and contacting old friends that I probably would not have been able to reach by other means, the more I thought “Wow, this is very useful, I can see what they’ve been up to over the last few years without even talking to them!”
Over time however, I noticed that my friend’s and their friend’s political views, social observations, photographs, videos and other media were all over my page along with the few posts that I may have put up over the last two years. As a matter of fact, my Facebook page is not much more than a mirror of their pages and an amplifier of their post. It seem as if my Facebook page has taken on a life of its own without me barely having to lift a finger. It represents me with political views I don’t necessarily have and with photos and videos of activities I don’t necessarily engage in.
I admit that I like to see what everyone is up to and what they like. But at the same time you may be judged by the friends or the friends of friends that tag you in Facebook. Some say to me, “Why worry about it? I don’t care what others think!” My short answer is, “You should.” We have all heard the horror stories of people’s lives being disrupted or even destroyed by what’s in a Facebook post, whether it’s in theirs or somebody else’s.
On a practical level, employers, partners and organizations can regularly check your Facebook and make certain assumptions about you which can affect your life based upon what they see. I’ve been told by others that I need to stay on top of my Facebook with account settings like “Hide post”, “Unfollow” and “Hide All from Opposing Views” (what!?). It’s almost like managing a pet and cleaning up after its mess. Perhaps I should just pull the plug.
Check out this interesting article on employers and Facebook:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-potential-employers-check-your-facebook-page.html
