Social Media Users BEWARE!

            With today’s rapidly expanding (and already expansive) social media outlets, there is always the fear of your information being shared with third parties. Whether those third parties are prospective employers, the government, or telecom firms, we are always wary of how we share ourselves and our personal information (or maybe not). The last thing we want to have happen is for a prospective employer to find our Facebook or Twitter and read that embarrassing status that we made four months ago, or see that one picture that probably isn’t very G-rated. I don’t know how many stories I’ve heard of people being rejected from possible opportunities just because of what they post to social media websites and how they say it.

            While in the past you might have been able to hide your overly irate and explicit tweets about how much you hate the Yankees, new laws that have come into effect that may change the way you interact with your future and current employers. As of about a week ago, the Illinois state House passed a bill that allows employers to investigate employee social media in order to avoid any internal conflicts, as well as to identify disgruntled workers or possible flaws in their business structure.

Now before you start freaking out and telling Shelley that there’s no way you’ll give her your Facebook password if Delaware passes something similar, you might want to know that the bill does not mandate employees to give the information; it just allows for the right to request it (albeit in a forceful and possibly unpleasant manner). This could put employees under some considerable pressure, although the bill does not impose penalties or the possibility of being fired for noncompliance. The purpose of this bill is to allow employers to understand employees on a more personal level, even though it seems quite invasive and unwarranted.

I’m glad to say that no such bill has passed in either Delaware or in my home state of Massachusetts, but this is definitely something that we should keep an eye out for in the future (or, if you’re from Illinois, in the present). The only thing that I can say is: keep that social media stuff PG.