The Shift of Privacy
In today’s technological advancing sphere, it is no longer much of a choice to be private. When individuals sign up for a Facebook or Instagram account, they should have common knowledge that the content they post is the content the world can see, whether private or public. This brings up freedom of speech through social media. We are given the privilege to say what we want freely on these platforms. Whether good or bad, these platforms give us a voice to advocate for a global issue all the way to state basic facts such as what you did on a Friday night. Our voice should be monitored carefully due to the fact that employers nowadays use our social media accounts to possibly hire us, or even fire an individual because of inappropriate content. In my vox pop, I interviewed USC students on their beliefs of freedom of speech on social media and employer perspectives.
An Employer’s Insight
Through my interviews, it is clear we live in a world where our society not only wants but needs to be cautious of what we say on social media in the fear that an employer might study us before moving forward. In an article, by Lauren Salm, she talks about how 70% of employers use social media screening before moving forth to hire a potential candidate. Among this 70%, 54% were not hired due to the content they posted was deemed to be unsuitable. These statistics exemplify how in our growing technological world employers seek out to social media to scout who could potentially work for them. “For those of us who work in an increasingly online environment, more and more we’re seeing behavior that would never fly in the “real world”- Sara F. Hawkins. Nothing is private anymore and it is seen through the working world and media.
There can also be incidents of people being fired for the content they post freely on their platforms. My vox pop included a snippet of one of my interviewees, Anehly Vasquez, stating a story of a coworker being fired for a degrading post about their manager. In the course reading, Tarleton Gillespie wrote an article about social network limiting what we say where they stated, “Public and policy concerns around illicit content, initially focused on sexually explicit and graphically violent images, have expanded to include hate speech, propaganda, and extremism…” This is some of the harmful content that can get employees fired due to what they post. We are now in a world where what we post is closely monitored. It is crucial whether we’re public or private, what we post would benefit us and not harm us from employers or coworkers seeing unprofessional posts. Next time, think twice before posting your next instagram story.
A Thinkers Perspective 