Take, for example, major league baseball. During
many young players hope to attract sufficient attention to secure roster and position spots. What, in addition to watching them play, are scouts and coaches doing as part of the "interview" process?
They are creating phantom
Facebook profiles and friending these players to get a first-hand look at their personal lives as displayed online. These guys are young and therefore are among the most active demographic of Facebook users and undoubtedly are inclined to post pictures of themselves at parties and converse in casual ways on their walls. One questionable photo or comment and they may very well find themselves in trouble (
Michael Phelps, anyone?) or out of a job.
And then so much for warm weather and baseball.
Jobs in general
From an employment perspective, among the most obvious uses of an online platform like Facebook is as a source of information for a background check. Your current employer may have done this and your future employer almost certainly will - especially if you offer public access to your online profiles, or perhaps you'll end up being "friends" online with someone inside the company already. And if you're lax about accepting friend requests that could have adverse consequences, well, that's your fault.
We once made the decision to stop using one of our regular babysitters because we thought she was showing up hungover most mornings she came to our house. What did her Facebook profile picture display? Her at a party with a beer in hand, looking rather tipsy. Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, but it helped paint a broader picture.
Other examples
Admissions officers at colleges, business schools, law schools, medical schools - whatever school you can think of - are surely doing this as well. That 4.0 GPA, 1500 SAT score or 760 GMAT score you have? You're risking throwing all that out the window if you've got a picture of yourself online engaging in questionable behavior, for example.
Lawyers are using social networking applications to help select jurors. It's an easy way to determine someone's biases if that person hasn't been careful - personal information combined with comments and pictures can be pieced together to help determine whether that individual is a favorable pick or not.
Consider how many people have been brought down on Federal charges from seemingly innocuous emails sent in the past. Engaging in questionable business behavior? Perhaps your online persona could give regulators clues. Using a "gray area" loophole on your taxes? Maybe the IRS looks for information about you online as part of an audit. Worked on an M&A deal? The antitrust folks could be very interested in any careless commentary you've made online as part of a review. All worth thinking about.
One more not-so-pleasant-to-think-about example? People, including myself, love to post pictures of their kids online. Most people I know are right around the age of having one or two kids who are one to three years old and many parents' Facebook profiles proudly display their cherished little ones. I see nothing wrong with this as long as you apply discretion - there are people out who have absolutely the wrong motivations when it comes to your kids and so would make those pictures viewable only to people you trust.
The web in general
Forget about Facebook and other social platforms - just Google someone's name and you'll be amazed what you can find out. What you put online becomes part of the web and is generally searchable unless you've placed it behind some sort of password-protected wall. And even so, the relatively newly coined "
deep web" (definition
here) is searchable via new and more sophisticated applications like
Pipl.
After re-reading this post it sounds a bit paranoid, but I think a little paranoia can go a long way toward keeping your life free of future hassles that a digital "paper trail" can create.
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