Students, professionals alike express concern over inappropriate content on Facebook, YouTube

DEREK DEGRAAD
Staff Writer

Many college students have been known to go out and party on the weekends and some of them end up in photographs on Facebook and Myspace doing things they would not exactly be in a hurry to discuss with Grandma over Christmas dinner. However, many are unaware that a growing number of employers are taking their weekend photographs into account when deciding who to hire.

A 2006 CBS column entitled "Employers Look at Facebook, too," reported that 7.5 million college students now use Facebook, the popular social networking site that, in many cases, allows anyone who can spell your name to look at all the photographs you put up on the site.

Tim DeMello runs Ziggs, an Internet company, which lets people post an online businessoriented profile that the company says will appear first in most Internet searches.

DeMello estimates that about 20 percent of companies are secretly scanning online profiles before they interview applicants. What they often find is shocking, including profiles that detail drug use and illegal or inappopriate behavior.

"They come in all buttoned up, their clothing is meticulous, they spend years building this resume, and this person that's sitting there is almost entirely different than the person posting on these Web sites," says DeMello.

According to the CBS article, many employers admit they have even learned how to access profiles students think are "private" and they are surprised by how many students don't care if everyone knows everything about them. What they don't know is that photos with your name attached to them make up your online "footprint" which can follow you the rest of your career and even cost you a job.

"It's not only recent graduates who are at risk either," said business executive John Challenger, according to the CBS article. He is the chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., an outplacement consulting firm. "Current employees are at risk of losing their jobs as well. A California auto club fired 27 workers last August after comments were found on other workers' weight and sexual orientation."

He added, "This newest Internet craze has wonderful potential, but right now friendship sites contain too many pitfalls and can do more harm than good when it comes to your future."

"I'm definitely going to take down my Facebook when I start applying for jobs," said Leslie Rodriguez, junior international studies major who hopes to work for the State Department after graduation. "Employers are able to look at that stuff now and I have some pretty ridiculous photos that might probably disqualify me from what I want to do."

In a recent Fredonia university senate meeting President Dennis Hefner discussed his concerns about some of the content that certain academic departments on campus were putting as a result proposed the creation of guidelines to determine what kinds of content is appropriate for Internet videos made by groups representing the college.

"If students are going to put their own stuff up, they're going to put their own stuff up, that's individual. If it's something more official related to the campus, we don't really have a campus policy of who would review this before it goes up," Hefner said. "Currently for our own Web site we have a very specific policy in place that people have to follow before putting things on the Fredonia Web site.

"If department chairs, coaches, and student groups want to put videos up on YouTube to help with recruiting purposes we need to have a process and policy in place for approving those kinds of things just like we do for website. I told the senate that in the spring I would submit this item in order to put together a policy that would probably parallel those of the Fredonia Web site."

Hefner was not specific about which types of videos he was referring to explaining that he doesn't go on the Internet looking for things to bust people for. Rather, he said the issue had come to his attention during a conversation he had with an unnamed student representative who described recruitment videos that his organization had put on YouTube.

"When individuals are ill prepared for a free flow of information they often find their privacy unwittingly compromised," said Shaun M. Jamieson, a graduate assistant at the University of Massachusetts in a column he wrote for the online magazine Student Affairs. "The story of a student missing an opportunity for a job or internship because of illicit or illegal disclosures of themselves on Facebook or Myspace is becoming all too common. Increasingly, YouTube presents the same threat to privacy as do these social networking Web sites."

A YouTube search using the keywords "college" and "drunk" returns over 1,000 video results. These include college students involved in sexual encounters, attempting to fight with law enforcement, being physically ill and in some cases trying to take advantage of apparently inebriated women. It is likely that many of these students being portrayed in the videos are not even aware that the video exists or that it is accessibile on the Internet.

YouTube does provide much more anonymity than social networking sites since images are not "tagged," or linked, with an individual like they would be on Facebook. This anonymity is counterbalanced by YouTube's lack of access restrictions, which allows viewing by anyone with an Internet connection.

"Students need to be careful with the kind of content you're putting on YouTube that is personal because that could come back to haunt them," said Hefner. He described a recent incident where a Connecticut student was denied her teaching credentials because of inappropriate content she had put on YouTube.

Jokingly he added, "As my mother used to say: Don't say or do anything that you wouldn't want on the cover of a newspaper!f"