My mother-in-law recently wrote an interesting post on expressing her views on her blog. The advice from her readers varied, I agreed with the advice from an Honest Man of ‘As I get older I tend to the philosophy that venting one’s anger/frustration/…. is only worthwhile when it achieves something (other than the self-indulgent letting off of steam)’
My belief is that you should never put something on the internet that you would not want your mother to see or say something that you would not say to someone’s face. Otherwise a blog can be used as a cowardly tool to express views that you don’t have the guts to say to someone’s face. This can be damaging to the subject of a blog and the blogger is often remote from the hurt/damage they have caused.
What about sharing more personal information? My brother-in-law has used his blog to talk about digital natives and he looks at the way people use the internet in the workplace. I have some sympathy with Jaye’s comments as I don’t believe using a pc in the workplace makes you a digital native but how you use the internet in your personal life is much more important. Therefore, a problem from my favourite agony aunt has prompted this post.
Quick summary of the problem – A firm has decided to recruit a junior member of staff online and the firm has rejected a candidate as during an internet search it is revealed that she likes to be ‘on top with my bondage gear and whip’. The boss is asking whether a candidate should be rejected for this reason. What do you think?
This is where I know that I fail to be a digital native – this fails my basic test of ‘would I want this information to be common knowledge?’ As the answer for me is a resounding no, I would not put this on the internet. Would I refuse to interview this candidate? It depends – for a junior post then probably yes. While, in my opinion, it does reflect poor judgment – my opinion is driven by the fact I am not a digital native. This leaves me asking myself, should I (and people like me) be more tolerant of internet exhibitionists or should the ‘youngsters’ who put inappropriate details in on the internet be aware of this risk they are running when they do so?
I’d have to say that anything I blog is written in the full awareness of who might read it, and that despite any appearance to the contrary I am inhibited by that awareness. I think it’s a fair cop to use the evidence of judgement (or lack of it) exhibited by a prospective employee as legitimate info on the candidate; none of us imagines that we’re posting only for ourselves and if we do we’d surely be deemed too dim to hire anyway. No?
Comment by chris — January 16, 2009 @ 6:34 pm |
The understanding of what a digital native might be and what it could be is what makes this a tricky one. Just because the potential employee is young doesn’t make them “native” with the technology. The publicly available ‘confession’ from the young person to potential employers, lovers, husbands/wives, mothers-in-law shows that they do not fully understand the language of the web, its cultural norms – both vital elements of being a ‘native’ and not an ‘immigrant’ in any context.
If they were digitally literate they would have understood, as you do, the netiquette and social norms of the web and how they impinge on our meatspace world. I’d therefore say that you’d be completely justified in not interviewing this individual, not because you believe this to be immigrant behaviour on your part, but actually because the behaviour of the potential employee shows that they have yet got a long way to go before understanding the moral, ethical and cultural codes by which we live online and off.
Comment by Ewan McIntosh — January 29, 2009 @ 9:33 am |