By: Anna Miller
It was a choice a few years ago, but today, it’s almost compulsory to go to college if you want to make something of your life. An education can open doors that remain locked otherwise, and it’s a nest egg you can always depend on in tough times. But college is not just a place where you go to learn; you also make friends and have the time of your life in the four years before you’re ready to enter the real world and accept responsibilities as an adult. And with social networking sites being all the rage, you’re bound to want to show off to the world your life in college.
Although this seems like a fun and in thing to do, there are a few things that you must avoid putting on your social networking page at any point of your life, because if you do, they’re highly likely to come back and bite your behind sometime in the future and especially when you don’t expect them to. Prospective employers are now checking your personal social networking pages to get an insight into who you really are and how well you’re likely to fit in with their professional teams, so any skeletons you have in the closet are likely to come tumbling out when you really don’t want them to. In general, you must be wary of putting up the following…
- Embarrassing photographs: You’re young and want to have a good time, so you tend to let your hair down and blow off steam once in a while. While that’s not a crime, you tend to make it one when you put up pictures on your page (or even if your friends put them up on their pages and tag you in them) and allow the world to see them. What’s private should remain private, not broadcast on the Internet for anyone to access.
- Private status updates: Your status updates reveal much more about you than you would think. So think them through before you type them out and hit the enter key. Also ensure that you delete any comments that you think are inappropriate or that could cause trouble.
- Personal comments about employers/workplace: If you think social networks are places for you to vent and rage and complain about your employer or workplace (if you have a part-time job or if you’ve interned at a company during your summer vacation), think again. You’re not only face the risk of being fired, you’re also giving potential employers a valid reason to avoid hiring you.
- Inappropriate comments: You also need to be careful about the comments you leave on your friends’ status messages and links because their pages may be unprotected and viewed by all and sundry. So no matter how tempted you are to say something, remember that it is a public forum and that anything you put on the Internet stays around indefinitely.
- People (friends) you don’t know: It may seem like a sort of status symbol to have hundreds of people on your list of friends on your social networking page, but if most of those are people you don’t know personally, you could end up losing more than just your privacy. It’s easy for anyone to steal your identity and ruin your life in the process if you’re not careful about whom you add to your list of friends.
To use social networks wisely, set appropriate privacy controls and take the necessary precautions to use a platform that is widely popular.
This guest post is contributed by Anna Miller, who writes on the topic of online degree. She welcomes your comments at her email id: [email protected].
