Periodic Fable

What digital divide? There is very much a divide on the basis of age – the older generation have grown up in a “keep yourself to yourself” era of treasured privacy, but younger people now plaster their identity all over cyberspace and aren’t so concerned with privacy (rightly or wrongly).

There is much celebrity culture in young people’s lives as well as the internet. Their social lives are organised on Facebook and replayed on Youtube: it can seem that everything about the young is entirely public and they hide nothing.

It’s been called “conspicuous living” at a time when materialistic “conspicuous consumption” is falling.

However, there’s a downside: as these youngsters start applying for University places or for jobs, they might regret the personal details they have splashed online. And it’s quite possible they will put off potential employers or colleges.

Only the other day someone was telling me that they had “googled” a potential employee they were interviewing. The person had a common name so the company couldn’t be sure whether they had found any relevant details – so there was luckily nothing to stop this particular person being offered the job.

It’s becoming more and more important to manage online identity and image.

Some companies promise to remove incorrect, inappropriate, hurtful or slanderous material about clients from the web. I think that’s not completely possible. One has to assume that what’s on the Web can be found. There are steps, however, that one can take to
manage one’s online identity.

My top tip is not to lie, but to use a slightly different name or nickname for personal web activity: if you’re “Beth Woodbridge” on Facebook with thousands of photos of you drunk in University bars, then apply for jobs as “Elizabeth Woodbridge” and make sure that there is a professional looking online presence at that name – a personal website or online portfolio.