Privacy Rights and Social Media

1522 Words4 Pages

A person’s right to privacy is being challenged with the high use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. What used to be considered part of your personal life is not so personal anymore. When one chooses to share details about ones-self to their friends via a social media, they are not always thinking about the “other” people. The other people could be ones current boss or future employer. Other people could be a school official, your baseball coach, your friends’ mother; you name it the list goes on and on. Recently, a few employers or perspective employers have requested Facebook and other social network log-in information. It is probably a violation of equal employment laws, and there are two senators investigating the practice of requiring job applicants and employees to provide their social network log-in information as a condition of employment.

Most of us feel that what we do outside of work or school is our personal life and should have no bearing on our professional/business life. Being on a sports team during high school, we were told on many occasions to not bring outside problems or issues to practice with us. In a sense, now looking back, the coach was respecting our privacy. She did not want to know that one’s cell phone bill is over two hundred dollars and their mother is going to be very angry when she sees it, or that one had an argument with their boyfriend twenty minutes before leaving for practice. She was allowing us to keep our personal life separate from our sports life.

Ms. Galutz, color guard instructor, would refer to this practice as “checking your baggage at the door,” It does not mean they were not looking at what you were doing outside of our practice times, it just meant to not let it aff...

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... a future employer would perceive what they see. Protect your own right to privacy and limit what you allow to be public information. Reducing your friends list may help protect you, too. If you know a certain group of friends that are the weekend party people, then maybe they need to be just your friends and not your Facebook friends.

Hopefully, in the near future, there will be some legislation passed to protect our privacy rights but even then remember you are the best defense against any personal information that may cause damage to yourself.

Works Cited

News, WKTV. WKTV News Channel. 14 February 2012. .

Press, Associated. US. News. 26 July 2006. .

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