Facebook and your social life
Facebook can be great for our social lives. Without it, we would not be able to keep in touch with friends from high school that we wouldn’t usually call or text. It is also a great tool for sharing your pictures with your friends and family. On top of that, we all love to do the occasional “stalking” of people we lost contact with. Out of a survey of 29 people, 25 (or 82.8%) said they believe that Facebook has a positive affect on their social lives. The other four (or 17.2%) believe that Facebook has a negative effect of their social lives.
Despite all of the benefits of staying in touch through wall posts and Facebook chat, the very popular website could also hurt your communication skills outside of the social network. Today’s young adult generation is known to be less professional with communication due to high technology skills and informal communication via the internet. Now when there is a problem in one of your classes, you could email a professor instead of having to talk face to face. When having a problem with a friend, it is just as easy to wait until the little green circle appears next to their name on Facebook chat than it is to walk to her house to talk things out.
How Facebook is affecting your love life
It may be that switching your relationship status from “single” to “in a relationship” has you grinning from ear to ear, but out of the same survey of 29 girls, 24.1% of those girls believe that Facebook can ruin a relationship, and has done so in the past. Facebook can affect your relationship because looking at your boyfriend’s wall posts and pictures can lead to jealousy. A lot of girls may look at a picture of their boyfriend from last night’s party with his arm around another girl, and take it as he is cheating. As it turns out, the girl is most likely just a friend, whose boyfriend might even be the one taking the picture. Five women (17%) out of the survey expressed that they found inbox messages and Facebook chats that their then boyfriends used to secretly flirt with ex-girlfriends or girls they were interested in, which led to an ugly break up.
Facebook can prevent you from scoring your dream job!
Go onto your Facebook page and take a look at your pictures and wall. If you see anything that a future employer might not like, then you could be preventing yourself from landing that dream job you worked so hard to get. Major companies have admitted to going onto their perspective employees Facebook pages to make sure the person they are hiring will not be a liability to the company. Any excessive partying shown in your pictures could leave you with a negative impression. Any underage drinking and drugs shows a company that you don’t care about the law, and they may disqualify you on the spot. 72.4% of the 29 girls surveyed admit that if a future employer were to look at their Facebook page they would likely not get the job due to inappropriate content. Some companies don’t want to do the peeping themselves, so they even go as far as to hire professional Facebook stalkers, called “scrubbers” who look for your Facebook page and give any information they can find to the company.
On the other hand however, Barbara Weisbein, the Human Resource Director of Raich Ende Malter and Co. Certified Public Accountants, says that companies should never Google a potential job candidate or go on their Facebook. If a company finds out information about a perspective candidate on the web and then uses it against them, the company can be sued for using information they were not entitled to know to form a bias against them. This is why Barbara says that Raich Ende Malter and Co. does not in fact Google, Facebook stalk or use anything that their possible future employees did not give in the interview or in their resume. She believes that all perspective candidates should be evaluated professionally. Barbara did however say that many companies do still check, and if you do have a Facebook, clean it up. Here are some great ways to ensure your Facebook will not affect your dream job.
- Remove all pictures of excessive partying
- If under 21, do not show any sign of drinking whatsoever
- Do not post any comments, pictures or quotes about drugs
- Do show the good things such as extracurriculars, community service and education information
- Set your Facebook to PRIVATE!
Facebook can majorly affect your grades!
Have you ever had a huge test or assignment due and you found yourself checking Facebook so often that you end up spending more time on Facebook than on your work? If so, welcome to the club. 93.1% of the 29 girls surveyed think that Facebook is affecting their grades in a negative way. The best thing you could do while studying for a test is to not have your computer with you if you do not need it. If you do, on the other hand, need it then download the application “self-control” which blocks distracting websites from your computer for the period of time you choose. This will break the urge to take that one last peek at what your Facebook community is doing while you are miserable doing your work. Another suggestion from Lauren Siegel, a sophomore psychology major, is to let one of your friends change your Facebook password and not give the new one to you until you finish your work. This will make it impossible for you to get onto Facebook until you show your friend your finished work or prove that you know the material being studied.
At the end of the day, Facebook is a huge part of our lives. Although there are negative aspects of Facebook that can be a threat to our futures, we just need to be careful. This article was not to scare you into deleting your Facebook account, but to warn you to be careful of what you put on the Internet for the world to see. Afterall, you do not want your drunken college nights to keep you from scoring your dream job.