Cleaning Up Your Act on Social Media
We’ve all got social media accounts. Some of us like to over indulge a bit more than we should do but typically there’s nothing wrong with this. Sharing what you had for breakfast, sharing what you had for lunch, sharing what you had for dinner and sharing just how many drinks you managed to force down last Thursday night. We’re sure your friends love reading such updates!
The problem is though, social media accounts are often visible by anybody and everybody. So when it comes to applying to university or applying for that job, guess who could potentially see those comments that you made about your friend in a bikini? You guessed it: Your future university or employer.
Though it’s worrying that you might be judged on aspects of your social life that you may prefer to remain private, using social media introduces an element of openness to your activities. Universities and employers may argue that if you are going to represent them, they would prefer to make sure that the publicly visible side of you suits the values they represent.
With no immediate resolution to this morally challenging scenario, what you need to do, is clean up your social media accounts. That’s what this article is going to help you with.
What would your mum think of your latest Facebook updates? What would your dad think of that latest tweet? And would you find yourself on the end of an RKO from your university or employers of the future?
Facebook is the biggest Social Media service of them all. You might think that it’s quite private. You are only friends with the people you know and only they can see what you post, so you may think. However a quick search on Google for your name may bring up your account and depending on your privacy settings, a potential employer or future university would be able to see what you’ve posted and what you’ve been tagged in.
So as far as Facebook goes you’ve got two choices. The first option is to go through your entire Facebook history, look at each comment that you’ve posted, each photo you’ve uploaded and everything you’ve ever been tagged in and delete or remove any tags if you feel that they are incriminating to you and your potential future employment. This is quite time consuming though and ridiculously boring (depending upon your social media lifestyle). Instead, what we suggest here at Coursefindr is to change your privacy settings.
To do this head up to the Settings button in the top right hand corner of Facebook and go down to ‘Privacy Settings’.
From there, there are several options that you can adjust to change the privacy levels on your account. For example, you may feel that your photos aren’t actually that bad, you don’t have anything that you’re embarrassed by and there’s nothing that a future employer or university would worry about. If this is the case, you may choose to leave the photos open so they can actually have a look around your private life. In a roundabout way it might actually help your application. They’d get to see you as a human being with no worrying traits.
If however there are photos of you enjoying a fight with locals in Benidorm, dancing with minimal clothes in Thailand or just having one too many pints down the local pub, you may wish to adjust the privacy settings so only your friends can see them. Of course this means that your friends will still be able to see those photos, which is no good if they are in the admissions office at the university or they are your potential new employer. In which case you’ve got no option but to go through and delete everything, or find a job where your friend won’t be your boss.
Twitter is the Social Network on which we all love to post our random and hilarious thoughts and opinions. Limited to just 140 characters, this means sometimes we get straight to the point and at this stage your intended message can sometimes be taken out of context. It’s also very easy for anybody to see your Twitter accounts – they’re normally completely public. So if you’ve posted a rather damning review of One Direction’s latest appearance on the X-Factor, that could be seen by everybody, which is great if your new employer also hates One Direction, not so great if they’re a Directioner.
So how do you clean up your act on Twitter?
Well again there are two options. You can either go through each tweet that you’ve sent and delete the ones that may not show you in the best light. Time consuming, boring.
We suggest this way instead: If you’re prone to posting inappropriate comments on Twitter (we’re not here to judge, just advise on how to cover up your account), then tweak your settings to hide your ill-advised rants from the wider world.
In the settings on Twitter you can make your profile ‘Private’. What this means is only your followers can see what you post. So that’s great for all your friends and it’s great for you because your future employer won’t be able to go snooping around.
These days owned by Facebook, Instagram is the social network of choice for highly-filtered mobile phone snaps of food, holidays and jovial behaviour. As with Facebook and Twitter, the pictures you post may be publicly visible and you may wish to alter this so that only your approved followers have the pleasure of seeing them.
This is as simple as tapping the relevant icon next to your profile picture to edit your profile. From there, turn on the ‘Posts are private’ setting and you are good to go without fear of being judged by your university or future employer on your poor taste in food or lack of photography skills.
In summary, clearing up your social media act needn’t be a time consuming process. In fact nine times out of ten all you need to do is hit the ‘Settings’ button and change the privacy rules on your account.
Of course what might be easier is to take a look at yourself and reconsider what you’re posting when you’re posting it in the first place. What would your mum think of your latest Facebook updates? What would your dad think of that latest tweet? And would you find yourself on the end of an RKO from your university or employers of the future for your recent holiday Instagram?