College Admission Representatives, employers, and landlords should consider applicants’ social media posts prior to making decisions about college admissions, job offers, and housing
Introduction
The current world is technology-based. The conventional social world is rapidly being replaced by social media platforms. Millions of people are finding it more convenient to interact over social media platforms. A social media platform like Facebook, for instance, connects billions of people globally. Anyone from any part of the world who has access to the internet undoubtedly has an account on at least one social media platform. The younger audience, particularly, is finding pleasure in living their lives through social media platforms. They find the need to post their activities, thoughts, feelings, opinions, and day-to-day lives on social media. The prevalence of social media living is becoming vibrant to the extent that these platforms are becoming an obvious avenue to determine people’s characters, behaviours, personalities, goals and ambitions. This, to college admission boards/job admission boards/landlords, is an ideal platform to judge or gauge or vet the eligibility of the students they need to admit in the case of college admission board or an employee they wish to hire in the case of job admission board or a potential tenant in the case of landlords. In as much as many people may argue against these parties using social media posts to vet for their ideal candidates on the grounds that it amounts to a breach of privacy, it’s important for them to have the power to consider their students/employees/potential tenant social media accounts. Such a move prompts candidates to be considerate of the posts they make on social media as it gives institutions a broader range of criteria to assess their candidates. In regard to this, this paper argues that College Admission Representatives, employers and landlords should consider applicants’ social media posts prior to making decisions about college admissions, job offers and housing.
Discussion
Social media platforms provide for privacy policy and allow every user to privatize their accounts or limit the people who have access to their accounts or view whatever they post on these platforms. This means that users that do not make use of the privacy features are comfortable having the public access their accounts and social media posts. If a post is made public, then it is public information. This gives everyone who is interested in the student/job applicant or the potential tenant the liberty to run through their accounts and determine the kind of person they are. According to Bender et al. (2017), social media posts are a reflection of people’s behaviours; thus, they can help potential employers determine the kind of behaviours tied to the job applicant. An employer or a landlord, or an admission board would not want to employ a rowdy individual or an individual with shady behaviours that violate the organizations values and ethical principles. Social media posts also help to determine an individual’s ideologies and reactions to divergent opinions. In a nutshell, social media posts help the vetting individuals to determine how their potential candidates conduct themselves and help them arrive at a conclusion on whether to admit them to their college/organization/or give them a tenancy contract.
Secondly, the internet is undoubtedly a great source of information. People use the internet to quench their thirst for information as well as seek new knowledge. In regard to this, social media platforms may be considered a search engine—used to seek information about people. Employers, college admission boards and landlords would always want to make appropriate and accurate decisions on who to admit. According to Howard et al. (2020), “Admission counsellors who are checking social networking sites are mostly looking for content that people would find objectionable, like racist comments, or would raise concerns about a student.” Therefore, using social media posts to judge a candidate may not be wrong after all. In an era where institutional racism is criminalized and colleges, organizations and apartment owners are highly advocating for diversity; it would be wrong for them to admit/employ or give a tenancy contract to anyone who exposes racist characters on social media—most likely, that’s the same character that the individual may exhibit in person. Howard et al. (2020) further claim that individuals who post self-incriminating information on these platforms exhibit lack of common sense. No employer/landlord or college board would want to admit someone who exhibits a lack of common sense because the individual will definitely become problematic to the institution. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with looking through the internet to determine a potential candidate.
Some people claim that it is inappropriate to judge people based on their social media posts. Kordzadeh & Young (2015) claims that using social media posts to deny people opportunities is a violation of privacy and, in some case involving free speech posts—amounts to a violation of the First Amendment. However, this is not the case. All social media platforms have privacy policies; thus, when someone ignores these policies and puts out public posts, then the individual has given the public the right to judge him/her based on these posts. Therefore, colleges, organizations and landlords should use the information to judge the individual.
Conclusion
In conclusion, college admission boards, employers and landlords should be given the liberty to access the social media posts of their potential students/employees/tenants respectively. Social media users ought to realize that whatever they post on the internet is public information that may be used to judge them. Using social media to judge candidates is an appropriate way to admit good students or employees that will steer the company towards success or tenants that will be easily manageable.
References
Bender, J. L., Cyr, A. B., Arbuckle, L., & Ferris, L. E. (2017). Ethics and privacy implications of using the internet and social media to recruit participants for health research: a privacy-by-design framework for online recruitment. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 19(4), e7029. Retrieved from https://www.jmir.org/2017/4/e104/
Howard, S., Kennedy, K., & Tejeda, F. (2020). Social media posts about racism lead to evaluative backlash for Black job applicants. Social Media+ Society, 6(4), 2056305120978369. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305120978369
Kordzadeh, N., & Young, D. (2015). Understanding how hospitals use social media: An exploratory study of Facebook posts. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nima-Kordzadeh/publication/301820097_Understanding_How_Hospitals_Use_Social_Media_An_Exploratory_Study_of_Facebook_Posts/links/5729b58e08aef5d48d2d66cb/Understanding-How-Hospitals-Use-Social-Media-An-Exploratory-Study-of-Facebook-Posts.pdf
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