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Brittany Johnson

November 2, 2014
UWRT 1103

Inquiry Project

My inquiry question was Is anything really private on social media, and should
employers be allowed to use it to hire? This question turned up a lot of research when trying to
find a way to defend how I felt about this topic. In this paper I will discuss the two different
sides to this topic, and I will also show a counter argument against the side that was talked about
the most. The side that was argued most was that it was okay for employers to use any type of
social media to look at potential employees throughout the hiring process, people also said that
social media was not as private as it could be. Throughout my research I have seen evidence to
support both claims in which it is an invasion to privacy, and that it is not an invasion to privacy.
According to Merriam-Webster, privacy is defined as the state or condition of being free from
being observed or disturbed by other people.
The term social media refers to any online site where you are interacting with someone
else through what may be instant messaging, posts on the persons page, or even liking of
someones photos. In researching this topic, as primary research I decided to interview a few of
my fellow peers, and my mom who works at a hospital and is a manager. I also decided to
observe some of my friends/family and see if people use their privacy settings, and how often
they post things that could possibly land them being fired or not hired. When I interviewed my
roommate Lindsay Davis this is how she responded to my questions. The first question that I

asked was Do you believe social media is as private as it could be? She then replied No, I do
not believe everything that you post on social media is private because even though you have
privacy settings on it does not stop people from tagging you in photos, or even in locations where
you have been. After interview Lindsay I decided to get a second opinion on my questions
from a different source, so I interviewed my friend Justine Martinez. I decided to ask Justine the
second question which was Do you believe that employers should be allowed to use social
media when hiring employees? Her response was I do not think that employers should be
allowed to use social media when hiring because I feel like it is an invasion of privacy. I feel
that they should have an interview with you or see what you are like in person rather than see
what you use to do when you were in college. Another interview I conducted was with Dakota
Brookshire, I asked him both questions to see if there was a different perspective from a mans
point of view. His answer to my first question was I do not believe everything on social media
is private because privacy settings, are not as good as they seem. They make some parts of your
profile private, but even the website manufactures can see things about you. I then proceeded to
ask him the second question, in which his answer was the same as the ones before. His answer
was I believe that they should because it helps them to know who they are hiring and what kind
of person you might be. After interviewing some of my peers, I interviewed my mom Dawn
Johnson to see what her thoughts were on using social media to hire employees. She said I
believe that using social media is not a very good way of telling who you are hiring because it
shows what the person used to be like not what the person technically is like now. I believe we
should go back to interviewing people as I do now, it gives you a better sense of what kind of
employee you might be hiring.

When researching I used many sources, some of which shared the same view I had on the
topic, which was that I believe that social media is not as private as it could be and that
employers should not be allowed to use social media when hiring, but most mainly shared the
focus of employers should be allowed to use social media to conduct interview, and in the hiring
process. Most also shared my same opinion however, that social media is not as private as it
could be. Claypoole talks about how privacy is really not a thing on social media anymore
because the people who run the sites can still look at your information and gain research from it.
In this article that I found by Claypoole, he talked about how privacy is being destroyed by social
media, he talked about how ever since social media has come about we have lost privacy.
Claypoole (2014) also states that In 2013, legislators and regulators in the United States
appeared to be more concerned with about the data that they could glean from social media than
protecting the privacy of the average citizen This quote shows that social media really isnt
private because the government is still able to get any kind of information from your profile,
blog posts, or status updates and they use it for research that is conducted behind closed doors.
Another source that was very helpful was the e-book titled Security and Trust in Online Social
Networks by Barbara Carminati. This source went into depth about the trust issues in social
media/networks privacy. Carminati (2014) talks about how we have lost trust in our social
media sites because of the lack of privacy that they provide. Carminati also talks about a way to
reduce the risks of personal information being spread by adopting access control techniques.
Basically having to get permission before accessing someones private information, the way that
things should be.
Another source that I found to be helpful in my research on this topic was an article on
the USA Today website and was written by Sharon Jayson in 2014. This article talked about

how Microsoft mines through information and has found for example that women are at risk for
post-partum depression, it did not however go into detail about how this depression occurs.
Jayson (2014) also says this Its also allowed Facebook to study how parents and kids interact.
Just think that everyday Facebook is watching how you and your child interact, or what your
child says to you through your social media or vice versa. To me this sounds like an invasion of
privacy, granted not everything should be put out on social media for the world to see but when
it is then people start to use it for research. This article also talks to a Facebook data scientist
named Adam Kramer about what the company learns from forming research. He says that
Facebook especially, and Microsoft are scared to death about privacy issues. If these sites are
scared about privacy issues, then why dont they make them better for users, so we are not scared
about people finding out our information that is supposed to be private. Lastly I used a source
that was called What Your Social Media Reputation says to Employers by Emily Driscoll
(2013). This source talked about how important what you post on social media is because it
could dictate the type of job you get or if you even get hired. Driscoll (2013) states that It used
to be that job candidates were judged on their resume, cover letter, and references before the inperson interview. This is an important point because I feel that using resumes, references, and
cover letters are much more important than what is on someones social media, however, some
people find using social media to be a much better tool for hiring employees. A privacy analyst
that was interviewed for this article stated that Theres a lot of stuff out there that can either hurt
you or help you depending on how on top of it you are. This is important because nowadays
employers are really focused on what you do on social media, and what you look at in your spare
time. I really do believe that this is not the way to go in trying to hire future employees, I feel
that an interview is a much better way to see how the person interacts with you and other

employees. I also feel that if you need to know anything about the future employee, like how
they worked at a different job you should use their references and contact them to see what they
were like not stalk their social media. All of these sources tied together really help me to show
my argument that social media is not private, even though the privacy settings may be turned on
your information really is out there for the business owners to see. It also helped me to come up
with my counter argument that I believe employers should not be allowed to use your social
media when hiring, I find it an invasion of privacy.
After evaluating all of my sources that I have found on my topic I have come to the
conclusion of a counter argument on what most of my sources have stated. I believe that
employers should not be allowed to look at social media because it simply does not show what is
necessary for a job. Your social media shows yes what you do on your free time, and who you
hang out with but it does not show how you worked at other places, or even what your work
ethic is. I believe in order to find that out you need to see a resume of what they person has done
and references to contact to see what this persons work ethic is and how they worked with
others. I also think they shouldnt be allowed to look at this because it is invasion of privacy,
why should someone be allowed to see personal information about you. I also believe that social
media is not as private as it should be, agreeing with all of my sources. There are much better
ways to protect private information, a solution could be by using access control, to get
authorization to enter someones profile to gain personal information. As you can see there are
different sides to this question, and all may be right but there are ways to improve privacy
policies and ways for employers to fairly hire employees.

Works Cited
Carminati, B., & Ferrari, E. (n.d.). Security and trust in online social networks.
Claypoole, T. (2014, January 1). Advertisement. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
Driscoll, E. (2013, June 3). What Your Social Media Reputation Says to Employers. Retrieved
November 4, 2014.
Jayson, S. (2014, March 12). Social media research raises privacy and ethics issues. Retrieved
November 4, 2014.

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