One of the first questions you have to answer when you enter the digital space is one of the most complex of human questions - who are you?
“Sitting in bed with your work laptop propped against your knees is not the same as sitting in bed with your client propped against your knees.”
Tallulah Habib, Social media activist
The answer to this question defines everything about your online experience: what Web sites you visit, what links you share, what username you choose.
It's difficult enough to answer as an adult, when you've been around the block a few times and had enough experiences to give you an adequate idea of your identity. As a child - or a teenager - the question is even more challenging. In fact, psychologists agree that a vital part of our development is the trying on of different identities, casting aside ones we feel are unsuitable until we find one that fits.
As a fresh generation of Internet users logs onto social networking sites, it is even possible to watch this identity formation in action - everything that makes a teenager a teenager - the mood swings, the rapidly changing friend groups, the following of fads, and even the complaining about parents - happens out in the open. This information is not only documented, but is also archived and added to a timeline for the world to see. You can of course filter the information, but to quote The Social Network: the Internet isn't written in pencil, it's written in ink.
A human being, however, is not. A human being constantly re-invents him or herself. One of our sales team members was telling me the other day that he, in fact, re-invents himself every single day. While most of us are probably not as flexible - or indeed courageous enough to deal with that level of change - even after we leave our teens we make constant changes to who we are. We learn lessons, we strive to improve ourselves, we form new relationships. Who we are one day might vary significantly from who we are in a few weeks' time.
Which is why, to me, it's so incredibly disturbing that some employers are now asking job applicants to supply usernames and passwords to social networking sites. The story came to light last week and, while Facebook has objected to the practice, there is precious little the social networking giant can do when you're sitting alone in a room with the interviewer, with your dream job on the line, and she asks you for your password.
Aside from the obvious protests like “that's akin to giving someone the keys to your home”, and “what happened to being told that I shouldn't give passwords to anyone?” what I find the most horrifying about this is that, by handing over your login information, you give your employer access not only to who you are now, but to who you were, and every little instance of you that occurred between the two. We're lucky in a way - those of us who are already grown up. Our Internet histories only go back a few years. The same won't be the case for future generations. It's true that you shouldn't put anything online that you're not comfortable with being public - but that's not the point.
The point is where do you draw the line? As technology becomes an increasing part of who we are - whether it's by letting us join virtual knitting circles or us using mobile phones to augment our own abilities and knowledge - it becomes increasingly important to decide where that line lies. While we are more willing to let business encroach on our personal time than we've been before, that doesn't automatically mean we should be willing for business to encroach on our personal lives. There's a difference, you see. It's the difference between you checking your BlackBerry on the beach, and you sharing a lilo with your boss. Sitting in bed with your work laptop propped against your knees is not the same as sitting in bed with your client propped against your knees.
XHead = The right to be different
It's perfectly understandable that social networking is new and scary for employers. They're allowed to be worried about employees bad-mouthing them behind their backs to an audience of hundreds, or forming connections with competitors without their knowledge. That's why it's perfectly acceptable for them to view the public profiles of their employees and to put in place policies that state that if employees get caught doing anything untoward on social networks they will be subject to disciplinary action. Personally, I wouldn't even mind if the interviewer asked me to log in so she could have a squiz while I was in the room with her, although I know many people would disagree. Again the line is blurry. Perhaps even that is crossing it. Handing over the access information though is definitely crossing the line.
Upon reading the article, a number of horrific scenarios crossed my mind. The power of a password unlocks not just information about you, but about your friends. It doesn't only allow the complete stranger with the interview questions to see, but also to do - what happens when our bosses begin to untag us from photos or delete our status updates? And if you're asked to write down your password - how many eyes might see it? Are all of those eyes going to be honourable?
But despite all of this, even under the assumption that the interviewer is a moral and upstanding human being (we'll ignore the fact that asking for login details does not seem to indicate this), there's a right here that's been violated beyond the right to privacy.
Despite our teenage journeys to discover our true selves, you see, we never really do. No one I know of is actually one person with one identity all the time. You are a different person in different contexts. At your friend's bachelor party, you'll behave differently to how you do with your mother. When you're talking to your friends at a braai, you're not going to act the same as you would in a corporate environment. We've always had that right, the right to be different on our off days, on our own time. We've always had the right to be off.
If we don't draw the line now and refuse to be coerced into giving the details of our social and private lives over to the powers that control our work lives, I fear we will lose that right. The new generations, the ones whose rebellious teenage selves are being recorded day by day, whose bad poetry and silly mistakes are being written into the World Wide Web, will have to live with and be judged according to their young selves for the rest of their lives. And the rest of us? We'd better be careful what we do, what we say and who we talk to in case we be judged by the great corporate powers and found wanting.
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