Your social media account exposes YOU more than you thought
I remember in the beginning of this course, we talked about many colleges now will hire people to scroll through every candidate’s social media accounts to learn more about the person. I think this is a very good and smart way to know people better, because everyones’ common app is always “Perfect”.
If you say in your college application that you played Varsity Basketball, and you were named the “Most Valuable Player” two times during high school. However, when people checks your Instagram, and you do not even follow any basketball content. I am pretty sure you are going to get rejected no matter how outstanding your grades are, because none of the selective colleges will like to accept someone who lies on their college application. There are too many examples of applicants being pulled out of the enrollment due to negativity on social media.
Harvard University is known as the best university in the world. With one of the lowest acceptance rate, only the smartest people who works extremely hard gets selected. But what happened in the year of 2017 was quickly spread on the internet. More than 10 students’ offer was taken away, because the admission office have found students spreading sexual pictures online, and eventually got them into serious trouble.
There are also examples of Yahoo employees getting checked on their Instagram, and being declined due to inappropriate content on their page. More and more companies are including a social media check in the background check, so it is important to beware of it, because it can effect your future.
Your blog really describes how this generation uses social media. I have heard of many situations similar to the one that you described such as people not getting a job because of what they have posted on social media. The same thing is also occurring with schools which shows how important your public image really is!
As much as it scares me, I think going through a person’s social media is also a good way to get to know them, or at least their interest. People do tend to give colleges/jobs information that they are the “perfect” candidate, but their social media platforms can tell you otherwise. Based on their likes, comments, retweets, and post, it can describe a person pretty well.
I agree that a person’s social media reveals more about them than a college application. Students should be aware that a school might look through their social media accounts because it will prevent them from posting anything inappropriate. Students need to be cautious of what they post because they never know who will see it.
I think that needing to be cautious about what you post online can be good and bad. It’s good in that it can hold people that do or say terrible things responsible for their actions. I’ve seen cases of people losing their jobs because they post racist or homophobic or whatever mean things on their social media.
At the same time though, I feel that there are a lot of people calling for other social media users to be fired over more trivial things. I don’t think just having some profanity on your personal page, for instance, is deserving of unemployment.