I came across an article today detailing the dangers of giving too much away on Facebook. People are forced to make a choice between sharing whatever they want with their friends and not “friending” anyone at work or being very cautious of what they share on their accounts and allowing people from their company to view their profile. To a certain extent, I can understand why it is important to be more reserved and not let your wildest personal moments leak into your professional life. However, I think some companies have taken things too far and are basically stalking their employees. Are we not allowed a mistake here and there? A fun day/night/weekend out with our friends?
One of the unfortunate side effects of being involved in social media is that sometimes people get to know you too much. Whereas previously what you do on your own time rarely made it back to the office, now people don’t need to run into you to find out what you’ve been up to. Plus, since we list our professional affiliations on our profiles, we are judged much more harshly for what we do, since it also reflects upon the company we work for. It’s human nature to see one bad instance and suddenly discredit the person entirely, or even the organization(s) they belong to. And so, corporations begin to crack down on this to prevent their name from being tainted by an individual within.
I’ve always struggled with how much to share. I innately want to share much more than I probably should at times, but hiding aspects of my life just feels fake to me. I don’t want to go around living some sort of secret, underground existence! I don’t do things I’d be ashamed of and though I may not always do things I could tell my parents, I never do something I couldn’t tell my friends. Some people in the world may be too uptight to appreciate some of the fun I have, but should I limit myself just because of them? Am I not allowed to participate in silly things like Undie Run? Am I not allowed to express my femininity in a photo shoot? My actions aren’t always G-rated, but they’re PG-13 (which is probably the best you’re going to get from young adults!). That’s pretty mild, yet I still feel unsure sometimes about how older generations will view me from a single picture they may have seen.
I would hope that any employer who stalks me on Facebook would be realistic enough to understand that the two or three times a year I do something unconventional do not define who I am. I mean, I don’t curse, don’t drink, don’t smoke, and don’t even have a coffee/caffeine dependency! If I’ve got the discipline to maintain that despite everything that’s going around me, certainly I can be trusted to have some responsible fun occasionally. In the future when I’m running my own venture, I’d want to have a culture that accepts the alter-egos people sometimes have on their own time. I saw a company that gives two “I just didn’t want to get out of bed” days to their employees annually because they recognize that sometimes you may not have a family emergency or be sick enough to get a day off, but you really need one anyway. Now there’s a company that understands that employees are people!
