Ries_Blog 6

Blog 6

            When I started using social media in 5^th grade (crazy), my parents sat my sister and me down to discuss what should and should not be posted on our Facebooks. They told us our accounts had to be private and that they would make us take down anything that was not appropriate. At that age, I did not have anything to post that would have been problematic, but my sister was old enough to drink in Germany – where we were moving to - and they were nervous that colleges could see that as a problem if pictures of her drinking surfaced in their searches. This was more for safety precautions, but they took a military approach – saying it was operation security and that jobs and colleges would be sure to look through our profiles. As I’ve grown up, I learned more about the dangers of social media that my parents attempted to protect us from. Had we not immediately had these conversations, I wonder if I would have fallen more subject to the potential for “sexual victimization of children by strangers” or the “online abuse” that girls are known to receive quite often on social media (Salter, 2017, pg. 13). This imminent danger was also coupled with our military television at our Germany station. This means that a majority of our commercials were either homemade, which was a rough time, or Public service announcements. These were pretty intense about the necessity of privacy in your online presence. Needless to say, that absolutely convinced me to be very specific about my privacy settings and what I posted. All of my accounts are on private – except the Twitter for this class of course – because I think having open accounts just invites a lot of people who I don’t need viewing all of my pages.

I started with just a Facebook at the highest privacy settings. My name is real, but I ensured that all of my posts are protected from anyone who I am not directly connected to. I make sure to only friend people I know, which also limits who is able to see my posts. In looking on Google, my Facebook is definitely the difficult one to find. Meghan is not an uncommon name, so there are plenty of people to sort through. When you search through Facebook, the name switches from Meg‘H’an to Megan, which eliminates my profile from the search. In the same way, my last name is spelled R‘ie’s, but when search Google switches to Reis, which again reduces the chances of finding my actual profile. Even when searching under the current spelling, my actual profile did not come up in the first few pages on Facebook. I appreciate being able to be a bit hidden – Facebook is the only one with a majority of my family and more authentic posts due to the lovely ‘tag’ features my mom is fond of using.

My Twitter is an anomaly online, and incredibly frustrated me when I looked it up for the sheer embarrassment of it. With this class, I now have two Twitter accounts – neither of which show up in the first few pages of Google. INSTEAD what immediately shows up somehow is the Twitter I made in high school for a total of one day. I made an account under the handle @riesasaurous – clever I know – and tweeted a really impressive line: “Fall weather is here!” I then proceeded to be embarrassed enough to deactivate the account. If you click on the link, it does say that the account doesn’t exist anymore, but the fact that it consistently came up first with my name attached was a fun time. My other two accounts were very difficult to find both through Twitter and Google. I did find that interesting, because both accounts have portions of my real name and should have connected more easily than the previous handle. Instead, they were difficult to find which I appreciated.

My Instagram I expected to be simple to find as my handle is my name with an underscore. It used to be more original, but I felt like I had outgrown that for some reason. I was correct! The very first name that came up was my own. That did slightly worry me, but I knew that my account wouldn’t show much when I clicked on it. There is only my photo and bio which gives very little information. I wish the picture did not show up, but my bio says CNU’20 and my sorority, which I feel like are fairly innocuous. I get very few weird accounts following me, so in some sense the privacy setting must be working. Part of me wonders if Instagram should be limiting the visibility to just the handles – would that protect people, or should they just change their handles to be more difficult to find? I know my sister has a complicated Instagram handle so that her students are unable to find her account. Maybe I’ll have to work with that in the job market, but for now and without a real job market at the moment I think I’m safe enough.

Lastly, I looked up my LinkedIn. Currently I have a fully open profile – which goes against most things I believe about Social Media. Because of the professional nature, I tend to use this platform much differently, which lends itself to being public. Especially in the current search for employment, I need to be more visible on LinkedIn than I do on other forums. It has so far done well, as I have gotten recruiters messaging fairly regularly. While that hasn’t led to a job yet, I know that’s more helpful than a locked down profile. I am the first one that comes up on the Google search, which I’ll take as the one and only time that will be a positive outcome.

Overall, this experience did reinforce my efforts of privacy. I was relatively difficult to find and believe I have a mid-range online presence. I am definitely not a guru that people will seek out, and I’m just boring enough to remain under the radar. I am always cautious of what I post and will remain that way because the internet is forever and that’s a scary concept. For now, we’ll just ignore @riesasaurous and move on with our lives as much as we can.

WC: 1,079

Salter, M. (2017). Crime, justice and social media. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.