To guarantee privacy, I ensure that all my social media profiles are kept private. You can’t even come across my Facebook profile if you search for me on the Facebook search itself. Protective, I know.
The reason I ensure this is twofold. Firstly, there are certain people, or old ‘frenemies’, I do not want viewing my profile, photographs, contact details and personal information. Secondly, I am concerned for the future and potential employment prospects. I only accept ‘friend’, ‘connection’ and ‘follower’ requests from people I know as to retain control over content. Even on Facebook, I must approve of posts and photographs before they appear on my profile.
However I do have two exceptions.
The first exception is on LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn to network with potential future employers, get recommendations and endorsements from colleagues and to ensure my current networks are maintained. My profile has a lot of professional information on it, however still does not include any contact details. Instead, professionals may make contact via ‘connecting’ and then sending an inbox message.
The second exception is that I allow my name to appear on published articles. Prior to university, I spent some time working as a ‘Digital and Direct Marketer’ for the tech start-up ‘Shoprocket’, which is located on Google Campus. Shoprocket is a SaaS e-commerce start-up that offers an enterprise scale solution, integrating seamlessly into any existing application, all with a single line of code. During this time, I blogged on their website and on guest blogs.
In the meantime, press approached us as to write about the product. For example, Superbcrew, an online technological news site, interviewed me for the content of an article. The published article includes my name and a photograph.
Therefore I am concerned for my privacy online and limit information found online about me. When I worked in the press team of a council, we used to get calls such as when an underage student from a school is of interest to a journalist in a negative story. We would have to ensure that the student makes their social media profiles private quickly as to help protect them.
Do you believe I am being overprotective? I am very particular about my online presence due to having my entire career ahead of me, since I am 21 years old. Do you think in 10 years, when hopefully I am in a stable job, I will still need to be as cautious? Why?
Network Society and the Media 
It’s really interesting to see how protective you really are. I think to an extent it’s good to be careful. I also watch what I post online but it’s not bad to let employers see a little of your fun side..but in moderation 🙂
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You are overprotective, however you do have the reasons to be, and certainly in this day and age, very logical reasons such as a future employer seeing a picture of you partying with friends and make their mind about offering you a job based on that information. In 10 years, the way I see it is, it can turn out to be one of two scenarios, either you’re not overprotective and even have your employer and colleagues on Facebook (or something similar), or you have Facebook that you’re still overprotective of, and something like LinkedIn for the professional connections.
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