When you publish something online – be it a blog, facebook post, or tweet, you’re post will live on in cyberspace forever. Seriously – forever. When you’re in college you want to make sure that you are very careful with what you post on your social media feeds and how you behave on social media in general. There are lots of behaviors that might be common and accepted, but not necessarily appropriate. Here are some social media etiquette tips for college students.
Keep Your Content Private
As much as you can, you want to keep your accounts and your content private. You never know who might want to follow or harass you, and you really don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. Some platforms will let you have a public account but keep certain posts private, while others will just give you the option of keeping the entire account public or private. In most cases, the more private you are with your social media, the better.
Ignore Trolls
No matter who you are, you are susceptible to the wrath of an internet troll on your social media feeds. If this you find yourself in a troll’s crosshairs, the best thing you can do is just ignore them. Whether you are capable of throwing all of their ignorance in their face or not, by acknowledging them you are giving them exactly what they want, and that is the validation to keep on going. So be sure to just let those posts go and move on with your life.
Ask Permission Before Posting Pictures of Others
Whenever you take a picture of a person or with a person, you want to ask them if you can post it on your social media, unless it is expressly understood that that was the intention all along. If you do post a picture of someone that they either find embarrassing or humiliating, then you could really hurt their self esteem and compromise their trust in you. If you do it in a way that seems in any way malicious, you could get in some serious trouble with your school.
Don’t Reveal Too Much
A lot of millennials who have grown up in the age of social media forget what it was like to remain relatively anonymous to the rest of the world and to value one’s privacy. However, the right to privacy is still very important, which is why it’s important that you don’t forfeit your right to privacy by exposing too much of yourself. Whether this be your body, your address, your medical history or anything else that’s very personal, you want to be able to pick and choose with some control who knows about those things about your.
Always Think of Your Employer
If you are earning Northeastern’s masters in finance then there’s a good chance that you are going to be looking for a very serious job once you graduate. If you are applying for jobs and potential employers can see a definitive level of immaturity in your social media feeds, then you could effectively miss out on numerous opportunities to find a good paying job. So whenever you post something online, think about how an employer would react to it.