College Admissions and Social Media

After reading this article, I plan to continue being selective in what I post in any social media, and to keep control over what people tag me in or share with me via social media. Upon reflection, I realized that my online presence has been recently very well but before the past 6-12 months it was pretty bad. I cleaned a lot up over the summer (not because of colleges but just because I got tired of things). Because of this, I understand that I need to continue my digital interactions because anything I put up anymore is very general and is typically announcements or reminders for friends.

Example: Marching Band Students remember to report to the band room at 7:15 friday morning. Don't forget anything you need for Friday Nights marching performance because we have pictures straight after school and immediately following that we will be loading the buses. Remember to layer it will be cold out! You must have your stadium jackets! Its going to be fun! :D

Here are the steps I'll take to maintain my current digital presence:
First, I plan to continue being selective in what I post in any social media. This is important because once something goes viral, you have no control over who sees it and what they do with it. If your selective, people are less likely to pay attention to what you post. Especially if you don't post very often. Also you can get in trouble with the law if you post something that shows you or someone else breaking the law (example posting a photo of yourself drinking when your not 21 or older).

Second, I plan to to keep control over what people tag me in or share with me via social media. This is equally imperative because not only to college admissions look at social media, people reviewing your resume for a job do it too. I have my security settings set up so that nobody can post on my wall, tag me in a photo, tag others in my photos, or tag me in anything else, without my approval. They can do it, but it will not show up until I approve it. I had a problem with people doing that to me for a while so I changed my settings on Facebook to that. Less than a week later I stopped having the problem, but I kept the settings anyway.

These steps, and my digital presence, is significant because once you put something on the web, its out there. You can take it down later but by that time it could have gone viral in which case you'll never know. College admissions officers do look people up via social media to gain a better understanding of the kind of person they are looking to admit, while not every admissions officer does it, and not all colleges allow it, you wont know if they look you up or not until its too late. Its far better to be safe than sorry.