Privacy, Legal Implications, and Ethics

         In an age where many people’s first instinct is to post whatever is on their mind, many questions about important issues arise. What level of privacy settings should you use for each social media platform? What online information can an employer require you to give and what are you allowed to post in association with your place of employment? What is ethical to post? I hope to answer as many of these questions as possible in this post.

         With the evolution of the different social media platforms throughout the years, choosing who can see what content has become a challenging decision when applying for jobs. When you are applying for a job, employers will search for you online, and very social media settings can seem suspicious to prospective employers. So the question arises, what kind of media presence do employers want to see in their candidates? Recruiters tend to be less suspicious of candidates who have the privacy settings that are most commonly used on that specific platform, so a good rule is to choose the most common privacy setting.

         Two of the other most common issues involving social media and the workplace are tied to legal implications. The first issue that arises involving the law is to what degree of access to your social media account your employer can require. Until very recently employers could require their employees to disclose their social media passwords so that the employers would have total access to their accounts, but thankfully many states have banned this practice. At our current time nearly half the states across the country have either enacted or introduced legislative bills prohibiting employers from requiring their employees to disclose this information, and if you are curious if your state is one of those states, you can click this link to find out: http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/employer-access-to-social-media-passwords-2013.aspx . Another social media issue that has been connected to legal implications are the employee social media policies that most companies require employees to sign. Most of these policies are used to prevent employees from disclosing sensitive information about the company and require access to social media pages, but some companies require their employees only post socially appropriate things on the company social media. This means that companies are constantly monitoring their employee’s online activities to prevent any blunders or fire the person responsible for a serious media blunder like the one on Chrysler Autos account in 2011:

         The final issue involving social media would be the ethical debate of employer’s right to view vs. an employee’s right to privacy. It is already generally agreed upon that employers should not have the password to an employee’s account, but other important ethical questions have risen as modern social media platforms reach their tenth anniversary.  Should a company monitor an employee’s social media? Should companies require employees to sign social media policies? To learn more on social media ethics in general, click this link: https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/unavoidable-ethical-questions-social-networking/ .