We live in a day and age where nearly everybody has a smartphone in their hands from the second they are old enough to hold one. The power of social media encourages the sharing of your entire life on the internet with anyone who might want to see it. But there are a lot of risks to sharing your personal information, opinions, photos, and other information online. Here are three of the strongest reasons that you need to be thoughtful about what you put online.
It Can Affect Your College Admissions
The first reason why you should be thoughtful about what you put online is that it can affect your college admissions decisions. The most important factors going into your college admissions decisions will be your transcripts, test scores, essays, and interviews. But you may be surprised to learn that colleges can and will check up on you on social media to see if you would be a good representative of the school. Posting pictures, opinions, or other info that may paint you in a negative light could come back to bite you. Be sure you aren’t putting anything online you wouldn’t want a college admissions officer to see.
Employers Pay Attention
Another crucial reason that you need to be thoughtful about what you put online is that employers pay attention to social media. Employers are likely to look at your social media accounts before deciding to hire you. If you are putting things on your social media account that would reflect poorly on a business or company that you work for, they will be hesitant to offer you a position. If you are serious about your career prospects, then you have to be careful about what you post online.
It’s Hard to Get Down
The final reason why you should be thoughtful about what you put online is that once you put something on the internet it can be impossible to get it off. Once you put your information out there, it is out. Even if you can delete your posts, you can never be sure someone hasn’t screenshotted them and posted them somewhere else. Only put things online that you are sure you won’t want to take down later.
Using social media and being connected with the internet is practically inescapable nowadays. And while social media and the internet offer unprecedented capabilities for communication across the globe, they also come with their consequences. To protect your future, you must be thoughtful about what you put online now.
Check out these 5 best practices for teens to stay safe online!