Employers and Social Media: A Refutation

A major issue that is becoming increasingly more prominent in the workforce is whether or not employers should be able to access your personal social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, to pass judgments about your life and your character. These judgments can play into whether or not you are hired in the company, or if you should maintain your job in the chance that your social media profiles display some sort of characteristic that a boss or employer does not agree with.

The Business Week article, “Employers, Get Outta My Facebook,” claims that, “when considering job applicants, prospective employers have no business poking around their profiles on social networking sites.” This article makes a few claims regarding the dangers and risks of having employers and bosses view the social media sites of potential and current employees, such as the unearthing of inaccurate information or a misrepresentation of a person’s true character from just a few instances on their site. The article also argues that even if a person makes their profile public, a public profile is a method for “casually interacting with others in an informal setting, on personal free time.” Whatever the risk, this article declares that employers should not be allowed free roam of a person’s social media accounts in order to make job-related judgments and evaluations.

I am in disagreement in reference to the argument that this article presents, in the sense that your information online is in a public domain, so employers do have a right to view the content, but they should do so only if you are fully aware that they are. When it comes to internet privacy and data transparency, a person has the right to know if someone is using their information – that is displayed on a public forum – in passing judgment or forming opinions. While information that is publicly available is legally allowed to be used in reporting and news, it should be in the right of individuals to be fully aware and notified of where and how their personal data is used when it is taken from online sources. In whole, public information is public for a reason – for all people to use it. But, the information should be used sensibly and with the person’s knowledge that you are using their personal information.

The Business Week article does present some possible benefits of employers being able to use your online information from social media websites, such as your Facebook page serving as an extension of your resume. However, this still does not allow a person  to understand when and how their personal information is used.

In order to best address this problem, employers should have their employees and potential employees sign a document that allows the employer to view social media websites to further research about their staff members. With this, people can understand when and how their information is used, and appropriately adjust their privacy settings if they wish to keep certain aspects about their life completely private.