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Monitoring Social Media Bias

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In the age of social media, every online user has been monitored, whether it was by a company looking at their Facebook, a school checking Instagram, or a friend creeping on Twitter. Today, people live in a social media fishbowl, and it’s pretty probable that one of the people watching you might be your current or potential employer. According to CareerBuilder, 52% of companies review job applicants’ social media profiles before hiring them now, up from 43% in 2014. Obviously, It can be kind of embarrassing for a company if one of its employees, who represents them, does something illegal via social media or posts offensive content. Also, student employees are much more hard to keep track of and monitoring their social media may help companies…show more content…
Today, Americans are generally more politically and socially conscious than previous generations; we use social media in an array of ways, such as fighting for causes, making our personal opinions public, and connecting with other people with similar ideas. In some cases, an employer might support the beliefs and values a worker makes public on a profile, such as being involved in gay rights awareness marches, but there is also a much larger chance of an employer disagreeing with an idea and the employee being penalized for their private life activities. Even if a company is neutral on certain topics, the social media could easily lead to discrimination.There should not be an opportunity for scrutiny between an employer and an employee with opposite view points made public due to social media monitoring. Recognizing that social media monitoring is a possible inadvertent violation of laws that regulate discrimination on the basis of political preference, gender, and race, companies should step lightly if at all. The the possible damage done by bias to workers is endless, and the potential legal consequences for companies infringing on the privacy and rights of their employees are…show more content…
Innovation has become extremely important to the success of most companies recently, and many businesses rely on the creativity of their employees. Many people, especially millennials and the incoming working class, use social media as a medium to express their personality and creativity; people might feel less comfortable sharing their personalities online when being monitored and their creativity might suffer from that. According to the Harvard Business Review, companies who encourage creativity are 50% more likely to be leaders in their specialized market. Some companies fail to recognize the correlation between disregarding the personal freedoms of their employees outside the workplace and the diminishing work ethic and flow of creativity within the business. It is understandable that companies expect a certain level of “social media etiquette” and employees should be in compliance with some company requirements.However, there is a big difference in expecting employees to be in compliance with company rules and regulations and hovering over their instagram posts like a helicopter mom. This can create a sense of distrust between employer and employee, which may in turn, undermine the loyalty that is crucial within the workplace. A company needs to trust that it’s employees are responsible adults, and babysitting
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