Dr. Jekyll tagged a photo of you on Facebook

[In response to Chelse McKee's "Keep your face off Facebook"]

Man, there’s nothing like the weekend!

Most students at the University of Manitoba work very hard, often balancing school with many other commitments. That’s why, come the weekend, most students are ready to let loose and have a bit of fun.

And it’s with “having fun” in mind that raises this week’s Master Debate topic: Should you self-censor indecent pictures of yourself on the Internet? Specifically, should you be concerned about the pictures on your Facebook profile when potential employers are investigating your digital footprint?

I argue that you should not worry about censoring incriminating pictures of yourself on Facebook. Further, I believe that this issue is a sad reflection of our hypocritical society in general; both in terms of how younger and older people behave in public, as well as through the “digital gap” between potential employers (old people) and new employees (students).

Obviously, there are some photos that should obviously not be posted on the Internet. There’s no excuse for posting pictures of illegal and criminal activity, and such pictures can (quite rightly) get a person in serious legal trouble. But we’re not talking about criminally incriminating pictures here.

What’s at issue here is booze. As almost any college student with a Facebook or Myspace account can attest, most (if not all) pictures posted are usually a documentation of the weekend. And as almost any college student in general understands, most weekends involve the use of alcohol. While there’s obviously no harm in holding a beer in a couple of pictures, most people on Facebook have plenty of “less than flattering” pictures of themselves stemming from drinking too much alcohol. But should you care that an employer or colleague is looking at these pictures?

On a very shallow and vain level, perhaps you should. It is your image, after all. If your photo archive on Facebook consists of you being passed out in the majority of pictures, than sure you should be somewhat concerned. After all, many people will be making shallow judgments and condemnations about your character, stereotyping you as nothing but an unproductive alcoholic. But it is exactly this shallow level that is most concerning.

The thing is, you should not be ashamed of such photos because they represent only a tiny fraction of who you are. The nature of our digital world is that there are usually only three kinds of pictures that make it onto the Internet: pictures of important events, pictures of vacations, and of course, pictures of partying.

This leads to the unspoken question: How often do we take pictures of the other aspects our daily lives?

The simple reality is that no one is going to post pictures of themselves studying in the library, reading a book, or writing an essay. Likewise, no one is going to take pictures of them or their friends while working their mundane part-time job. Yet work and school are what you and I — hard-working students — spend the majority of our mid-20s doing.

This leads to an important and understated issue underlying this debate: the digital gap between baby boomers and millennials. This is just the way many of us grew up — we are as comfortable in the digital world as we are the real world; and to us young adults, those worlds coexist at the same time. That is why young people generally don’t see a problem with having scandalous pictures posted on the Internet, while at the same time it is why older people do have a problem.

This thus leads to the hypocritical, duplicitous, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reality of our society — we can openly decry and condemn in others what we ourselves do. Do you really think your potential employer has never passed out from drinking too much alcohol? The difference is that in our digital age, it is far easier to record and show the world than in their days of the Polaroid. The difference here is that both young and old are doing the exact same thing — boozing it up — but those comfortable in the digital age (the younger ones) are willing to admit to it, while those out of touch with technology (usually the older ones) are not.

Employers should thus not look too deeply into embarrassing pictures on the Internet.

Michael Silicz is the Comment Editor of the Manitoban.