I was uploading photos to Facebook this morning from St. Patrick's Day and was suddenly struck by an overwhelming feeling of "miffed." It wasn't because Struggle City, population iPhone's Facebook app, sucks at uploading multiple photos (but seriously, let's get on that Facebook). It was because I had to be so damn picky about which photos I uploaded. They were pictures of St. Paddy's Day, so let me be the first to spill the beans that there were snaps of drinking and drinking games. But my friends and I are all well over 21 and the games were helping some non-acquainted friends get to know each other. No one had their head over the toilet or was drawing inappropriate things in Sharpie on anyone's faces. It was good clean Irish fun. But I didn't post any of the photos that contained a Solo cup and I didn't tag anyone in the photos. My Facebook photos are on lockdown-- only my friends are allowed to see them and I have a list of people who are excluded from seeing anything personal I post. I even worried that some of my friends wouldn't want the pictures posted just because they might be associated with a St. Patrick's Day party. It made me miss the days when Mark Zuckerberg designed Facebook to be a social network among college students. Back then it was ok to show a person blowing off some steam with a friendly game of Beer Pong without thinking that they were a horrible alcoholic lacking in morals or public decency.
I recently attended BU's PRSSA PR Advanced conference where a panel of young PR professionals described what it takes to land a job and chart a career in PR. One of the panelists mentioned the importance of being authentic. He used to have two identities-- work Mike and real Mike-- and he never let the two intersect. After realizing that this was a) exhausting, and b) didn't let people get to really know or trust him, he merged the two personalities into just Mike. It was pretty refreshing to hear someone say this and demonstrate that you can be successful being yourself in the workplace. But when a conference participant asked him if that same rule applied to compromising Facebook photos or candid Tweets, he said that you probably shouldn't be a person who takes those kind of photos or Tweets those things to begin with.
I agree with him to a certain extent-- if I'm an employer and I see that my potential Director of Communications is still participating in wet t-shirt contests 10 years out of college, I might have some reservations about hiring you or letting you be the face of my company. But it seems like young professionals are being hyper-critically judged by their actions and their Internet histories. Right now, it's ok for me to host a "wine tasting" at my house because that's considered classy, but drinking a beer out of a Solo cup on a porch at a BBQ makes me a philandering party animal.
I'm a firm believer that making mistakes as a young adult is an important rite of passage, whether those mistakes include drinking too much, skinny dipping, or kissing a stranger. Pushing boundaries is what tests your moral character and helps shape it. Is it necessary that you post those photos for the whole world to see? Probably not, but it should be ok to share them in a safe, secure space with friends and not be condemned for it. People mature as they get older and I understand that a person at 29 is not the same person she was at 19, so her future shouldn't need to be permanently compromised by her past.
I don't want to work with or manage a generation of people that is straight-laced, uptight, and cautious from the time they become freshmen in high school. There is an instilled fear in the YoPro generation that your Internet footprint follows you everywhere. Because it does. Despite my rails against the annoyance of not being able to post freely and securely, I am exceptionally conscious of what I post on Twitter so that it reflects the "personal brand" I want to convey. I have had to scrub my Facebook clean to prevent employers from finding evidence of my rowdier past. But recruiters are now requesting people's Facebook passwords in interviews or asking them to bring up their Facebook profiles and walk the recruiter through it. I'm curious what employers are hoping to find on there and how that proves that this person is capable of doing their job.
Even if your Facebook profile sparkles with virtue today, it's hard to scrub the Internet of a time when it didn't. Erin Andrews found out just how difficult when video of the ESPN sportscaster filmed from a hotel peephole went viral on the Internet. Despite her requests to Google to remove the video from its search results, the company refused because it compromised the integrity of search. (Read more about the story in a 2011 interview from Andrews in Marie Claire) I get where Google is coming from, but a defenseless woman was videotaped naked (in a location where she had every right to be naked) without her knowledge or consent, and that video is now in the hands and at the disposal of billions of people worldwide. She didn't have a say about who got to view her, and now apparently she doesn't have a say in how to stem its spread or prevent it from happening again. The incident will follow her in every Google search made, every Tweet sent to he, every report she does, every job interview she attends, and is something she will have to explain to every person she dates, and possibly something she will have to explain to her kids.
Sites like Reputation.com make their business off of burying controversial information and promoting other positive information in SEO and Google results, but even they can't permanently delete it. And they charge a pretty penny for their services, so the average Joe or Jane might not be able to afford to wrest control of their online profile.
I experienced the difficulty of scrubbing firsthand when I posted a photo of a colleague working in one of my organization's new offices. We were excited to launch the new site and introduce our networks to the new staff managing the office. A few weeks later, my colleague asked if I could take the photo down because friends had Googled her name and seen the picture on Google Images and she didn't want random strangers to know what she looked like. I sympathized with that feeling, so I took the photo off Flickr. Despite the fact that the photo was physically no longer present on Flickr, Google had still captured and stored that thumbnail and it continued to show up in image results, even though the link to the photo on Flick no longer functioned. She continued to ask me to remove it, but there wasn't anything I could do beyond that point. I felt guilty because I had posted the photo without her explicit permission, and now it was creating a sense of insecurity for her. Because of this incident, I don't tag photos of friends or post photos of them in potentially compromising situations. I also don't let friends tag me in photos or posts without my consent because I am wary that other people don't have my sense of discretion on the Internet.
Interestingly enough, a lot of people, especially younger generations, don't seem to mind having a substantial Internet footprint because it reflects that previously mentioned "personal brand." Having been introduced to social networks like Facebook in high school, my undergraduate classmates quickly realized the etiquette necessary for posting information to social sites and the power it could have for promoting themselves as experts in a field. They are ahead of the curve, because employers consider you culturally inept and not hip to technology if you don't have an Internet presence. They don't want resumes anymore, but they want to see that you are an "influencer" and that you can create an Oscar-worthy application video with clickable links when you apply for a job. Since I started grad school, I've invested more time in updating my LinkedIn, I have an About.Me page that links to my resume and all my social profiles except Facebook, and I'm blogging. I need my Internet footprint to land me a job. Ironically, I'm a little leery of this because I want this information in the hands of employers, but not necessarily broadcast to the whole world. I'm already not a fan of sites like Spokeo who publish information about my relatives, my political campaign contributions, or even what's on my Amazon Wishlist because its considered "public information." (They do a good job explaining why it's important to monitor this information in this post.) In a professional capacity, I don't want to be forced to create and share information just to prove that I can use the tools. I have been hesitant to promote this blog because it's personal and I don't want to be judged just yet for my writing. I don't Tweet all that often because sometimes I just don't have something valuable to contribute. I think most importantly, I don't want to be defined by a series of websites.
How do you feel about your Internet footprint?
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