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The Danger of Exposing Yourself

What happens a few years down the line when all these people who have exposed their innermost secrets are looking for jobs?

September 20, 2006 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 5 COMMENTS

You ever think about what's going to happen in 5-10 years when the internet generation starts looking for jobs? All these kids who are posting the intimate parts of their lives on Myspace and the such will be left completely exposed. Every potential employer will have full access to the graphic details of their lives.

It scares me more than a little bit that kids growing up today don't seem to understand the permanence of their online identities.

But lately I've been thinking maybe it's not the end of the world. The way I see it, in 5-10 years employers are going to have two options: Either judge a candidate by their past and don't hire them or don't. Now if enough of the candidates have chronicled their lives in all its excess glory, then it seems to me there won't be that many options. Employers are going to have to allow the past to be the past and hire some people who have documented some things that might not be entirely professional. I just don't see how else it can work.

What's more, I can't help but wonder if I'm just being old-fashioned. A friend of mine reminded me the other day that many of the things we now accept at face value were not considered 'normal' in the not-so-distant past.

In fact, a lot of those things are still not widely accepted today. People are still being punished for choosing to have sex with those of the same gender and there still seem to be Americans who believe Black people don't have the right to vote.

In the world I live in, neither being gay nor being Black means you should be treated any differently, but that is clearly not an absolute truth.

So I can't help but think that maybe I'm just being old-fashioned thinking that kids exposing themselves online is dangerous. It's possible that what's actually going on is we're actually approaching a transparent society where there are, "ubiquitous cameras, perched on every vantage point. Only here. . . These devices do not report to the secret police. Rather, each and every citizen of this metropolis can lift his or her wristwatch/TV and call up images from any camera in town."

I'm just not sure.

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COMMENTS

1Johanna

It's a really tricky situation. I have been broadcasting (so to speak) my life on the Internet for the past ten years, and it's nearly impossible for me to go and find every single thing, to make sure I wouldn't mind other people seeing it. I edited my Myspace account a little bit as I was applying for jobs, and did the same with other web sites I keep. Nevertheless, someone still managed to a. slanderously impersonate me, using content from my web space, and b. stalk me! I think it might just have to turn into a "don't ask, don't tell" situation (or "don't ask, don't Google, don't tell"), like you said.

September 20, 2006

2Andrew

You beat me to posting on this! Good stuff though. Semi-related, we were talking here at work the other day, and were discussing how doing business without the internet, and without email, seemed almost impossible to us...yet this was the reality for most people merely 10 years ago. Not to state the obvious here, but during the past 10-15 years, we have been in the thick of one of the biggest cultural, economic, and social transformations in modern society. At the rate in which things that did not exist a year ago, have now become commonplace and taken for granted, I can't even begin to imagine how the truth's of today will actually fit into the average person's thinking 10 years from now...

September 20, 2006

3Paul Watson

It is old fashioned but it is realistic all the same. I think you have to be a tad confident and brave about your ideals even in the face of an employer. There are some tricky posts and photos of me up on the web which my current employer knows about but while they don't agree with them they reckon it doesn't make a jot of difference to my role here.

I think the point is that we are all human and have all been through many of the things the kids are blogging about. We are all "unprofessional" if you measure it that way.

But at the end of the day it is what you can do for your employer and how you act on the job that should count.

Hopefully we get to a point where you wouldn't work for an employer who disagrees with your ideals and life experiences.

September 20, 2006

4mroonie

The internet has made it difficult for people to shut themselves off from the rest of the world. t's scary to think that all of the social tools that help us stay up to date and connected are actually very dangerous, especially MySpace. The thing is, just because you don't have a MySpace account or your own blog, doesn't mean that other people will not say things about you on their MySpace accounts or blogs, so you can't prevent it from happening. That's the scary part, it's out of your control....

With this being said, although employers may have free access to content on the internet about you, I think they should be traditional, respectful and conservative in their methods of trying to figure out what kind of person/worker you are by going off of your resume, references, and interview. And if they do come across information about you, it should be taken with a grain of salt because not everything you see on the internet is true.

But in the end, any employer who snoops around online to find out information about me would make me not want to work with that person anymore. They would have crossed the line in my opinion.

September 20, 2006

5Jecklin

I think we are moving to a more transparent society to a large extent, but then the biggest secrets are usually kept right under the nose.

I feel old-fashioned about this stuff too. My wife was telling me about cell phones and cars that can track kids so that parents always know where they are...When we have kids I hope we aren't suckered into the fear factor and go that route.

We have the unwisdom of youth factor, lack of discretion etc. and the Safety factor. There will be many kids used to growing up with tracking devices attached to their thick heads. As adults, they just might feel its crazy not to be tracked and always accounted for.

Think of cell phones. Road trips for years without cellphones. Now, got to have it...what if you get in a wreck or your car breaks down...What did people do without cellphones?!?!

September 20, 2006