Say goodbye to your personal lives, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s 1984.

A recent article by John Hechinger in the Wall Street Journal cites several disturbing studies that conclude that between 10 and 21 percent of the top 500 colleges in the United States

acknowledged looking at social-networking sites to evaluate applicants. Of those colleges making use of the online information, 38% said that what they saw “negatively affected” their views of the applicant.

What is more disturbing is that applicants have actually been rejected based upon photographs and information conveyed in their Facebook profiles.

In a related phenomenon, employers are also checking on prospective and current employees’ Facebook profiles to look for content that they believe would shed negative light on their company. Some companies (including the one I worked for this summer) actually require their employees to allow them full access to their profiles, and threaten dismissal upon seeing anything unrepresentative of the image they want to display.

As of this point you’re most likely thinking “But I’m okay. I have my privacy settings set so that only friends can see my profile.”

Au contraire, clever friend. Apparently rival applicants (read: the girl whose boyfriend you accidentally hooked up with) are giving tips and sending links to admissions officers in order to sabotage you. (That bitch.)

But still you have some semblance of control.  You can always un-tag those pictures of you looking dazed and confused or drunk. What is trickier, however, is somehow controlling the actions and profile content of your friends, another factor Big Brother can use to judge you.

This seems to me like a blatant attempt by colleges and companies to diminish the line between their applicants’ and constituents’ personal lives and career. Instead of clocking out at 5 p.m. you now have to behave like you are at work or school all day long, or at least conceal the fact that you collect guns and hope that no one tattles. You can no longer choose to not invite your bosses or college administration to your party — they’re there no matter how intimidating your bouncer is.

But when it comes down to it, I’d take editing my Facebook profile over a mask filled with rats any day.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Higher Education, Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.