It’s time to scrub your social media accounts

When’s the last time you cleaned up your social media accounts? Public or private, you should be taking a look back and checking out if the things you posted or were tagged in should still be visible to anyone – yourself included.

I’m going to assume that everyone knows who has access to their accounts, whether they are public (meaning anyone, not just those who follow you have full access to your account and all its content) or private (friends only). When assessing what you should keep and what you should delete, you need to think about who is looking at it and what the content is. For example – if there is a post from five years ago of you doing illegal drugs on your Facebook and you just accepted your boss’s friend request…you could have a problem. If you talk about your sex life on your public Twitter account and your 13 year old niece just asked you what your Twitter handle is, it may be time to reassess your settings.

More and more we are hearing of people who are getting in trouble, losing their jobs and ending up in embarrassing situations because of things that have been posted online. When Facebook first came to Canada, you needed to be a student at a university/college that Mark Zuckerberg deemed legit to even have an account. Those were the days. The stuff that was on Facebook because the only people who could see it were your other university friends was out of control. The unified purge that all of those people needed to do a couple years later when they opened it up to the general public was annoying, but necessary.

If you aren’t into doing an annual purge of your social media content…at least do one during these turning points in your life. What was deemed acceptable in your mind prior to these moments may no longer be the case. Here are the times when a purge is necessary:

You’ve graduated
Whether it be from high school or university, you need to make a purge. You were either completely irresponsible as a student, living your life by the seat of your pants, or you believe that you were completely responsible, and therefore you haven’t accounted for things like photos you have been tagged in or inappropriate things Jane wrote on your wall that are now making your future employers question whether or not you are fit for the real world.

You’re looking for a new job
Do you know the first thing most employers will do after they look at your resume and think they may give you an interview? They Google you. The first things that will usually come up, unless your name is Michael Smith, is your Facebook account and LinkedIn profile. It will only take a good internet sleuth 20 minutes to find your ‘anonymous’ Twitter account and that MySpace account you completely forgot you even had. Do you have your actual photo on your LinkedIn account (you should) – then they will find all of your other accounts. Don’t think that you have hidden things – there is always a way to find them. The best thing to do is delete, delete, delete.

Your boss or someone in HR follows or requests to follow one of your accounts
There is a line between appropriate and inappropriate work friending on non-work related accounts. Some people are fine with it, others are not. Some people want to have access to their staff’s social accounts, others don’t want to. The choice is ultimately yours, but beware. Remember that time you took a sick day and then Bob tagged you in a post titled “Day Drinks on Wednesday – Rebels without a cause”? That may have happened before you accepted your boss’s friend request, but now you need to get rid of the evidence.

Your 13 year old niece/nephew gets a Facebook/Twitter/Instagram account
This is a big day for them. They will want to friend all their friends, family and people that they don’t really know…just because they can! I don’t know about you, but there are some things about your life that your brother’s little kid does not need to see. Like that photo of you puking off a houseboat in the Okanagan, or the photo of you going to the vet with your brother with the caption, “They told the kids the dog was going to the farm :(”

You become notable/mildly notable
If you weren’t too worried about people from your work, your friends or family checking out your social history…you may want to think again once you achieve some sort of notoriety that would lead to any kind of scrutiny of your image. For example, you win a Top 30 under 30 Award, you save a baby from a burning building or you become the an internet sensation because or some random vine video that your friend made of you went viral and all of the local papers are now trying to dig into every aspect of your public and private life. Welcome to my world – says Kate Middleton.

You become a manager
There will become a point in your career where you are no longer the entry level stooge. You will be the one managing the team, deciding who gets promoted and who gets fired and having all the tough discussions. One of the things that can really lower your staff’s respect for you is – knowing that you actually act your age on the weekend and that you are not the all knowing god of awesome that you are trying to pretend to be on the job. Let’s keep it a mystery.

If none of these life events are happening to you right now…don’t worry. If you read this then your subconscious is actually telling you – it’s time to purge.