In middle school, we all had the invincible mentality, especially when it came to social media. We knew that if we didn’t accept our parents’ friend requests, we could tweet and post all of the curse words we wouldn’t dare say in real life! Well, I think it’s safe to assume that if you’re reading this article, you’re no longer in middle school. With that being said, I also assume that you know that at this age, it’s time to stop using inappropriate words or posting questionable pictures on social media, because more people care than just your mom.
I don’t know about you, but I for one do not want to open my Instagram and see a half-naked mirror pic of someone “showing off their new tattoo” or their “transformation Tuesday” of before and after their bikini diet. It’s also pretty annoying opening Twitter and seeing someone use the dumbest words in the English language to explain how excited they are to get “lit” tonight at their brother’s girlfriend’s step-grandma’s house while she’s gone at midnight BINGO.
In addition to the careless, obviously inappropriate pictures and captions, we often see those re-tweets of cute animals or “couples goals” that just happen to be coming from accounts with the word “sexual” or “porn” in their name. Obviously, the actual posts and tweets aren’t inappropriate, but the names of the accounts they’re coming from is more than questionable.
Things like these really don’t reflect a high level of education and really make it seem like someone doesn’t know how to correctly use social media, when they in fact might be generally intelligent.
Of course, we all have those occasional slip-ups where our anger or excitement gets the best of us and we drop the f-bomb when we shouldn’t, but keeping your social media rated PG is more important than you may think. Friends and family care, but so do future employers.
Believe it or not, what all of our high school guidance counselors told us turns out to be true! When making a hiring decision, the employee in charge WILL search your social media, and they will use all of those drunk-on-the-toilet pictures against you! Another fun fact: there are even internships and computer programs that are devoted solely to finding your social media slip-ups. And unfortunately for some of us, making our pages and accounts private won’t stop them.
Just think, if your future employer is looking at your Facebook and the Facebook of a peer applying for the job, looking more “social media savvy” with a clean, appropriate prof pic will set you apart. Being PG is being professional!
So I’m most definitely now saying that I have always been the picture-perfect social media user, but I am saying that I’m not the only one who sees it, and I’m not the only one who cares! When you’re on social media, you really do need to “Pause Before you Post”, like we all learned in middle school. It’s easy to get caught up in the digital world and let the feelings behind the keyboard take control, but we all need to keep in mind that our grandmas AND our future bosses are watching, and we need to keep our social media PG.
