What Does Your Facebook Say About You?

As students, we are constantly being reminded of the message that we may be giving to future employers. Whether this is through the subjects we study, the experience we undertake and even our online presence. During sixth form we may have never debated posting a hilarious half naked photo of a friend on Facebook, but now we can’t help that nagging feeling of whether employers will really appreciate its comedic value.

While it may not be something you want to hear, researchers are finding more and more ways to expose more than you can imagine just through studying Facebook profiles. For example, investigators at the University of Missouri have recently developed a new scale to measure the link between Facebook activity and personality. The devised scale shows that people who interact with friends, post photos and update statuses more frequently that those who do not, are more likely to be risk takers.

Moreover, Michael Kosinski recently investigated just how much personal information could be deducted from a Facebook page by using a complex algorithm. He wanted to see just how much could be deducted about an individual’s personality just by exploring their Facebook ‘likes’. With 58,466 volunteers and an average of 170 likes on each profile, the results were amazingly successful. Race and gender could be predicted with 90% accuracy and religion, political affiliation and sexual orientation with 80% accuracy. Whilst these characteristics might not concern you if they went public, it could also predict more dubious behaviour including whether an individual smokes, takes drugs and drinks, with up to 60% accuracy. It could even predict more obscure information, for example, if an individual’s parents were divorced before the age of 21 was predicted with 60% accuracy.

This may all sound a little invasive. However, it is probably unlikely that a company would ever go to such lengths to find out about your personality. There is no need to re-evaluate those 10 likes that you drunkenly clicked on, or de-tag every picture with a drink in your hand. Nonetheless, it is definitely worth considering given the ever increasing ways that the Internet can monitor and target an individual.

There are many upsides to this new development that could make Internet usage far better, including relevant adverts that are tailored directly to meet your preferences. Online advertisers would particularly benefit from the information as it would allow then to directly connect with their target audience. However, there are equal shortcomings to the software that could prove dangerous. Companies, the government or even individuals could use the program to discover personal information that people do not want others to know. Harassment is an increasing problem on the Internet and this technology could allow predators to gain even more information about their victims.

So next time you are posting on Facebook or trawling through your newsfeed, it is definitely worth thinking about your online presence and what it may say about you. The real catch in all of this is that the information can be taken without an individual ever knowing. While it probably is unlikely that your future employer will reel of a list of qualities that they have deduced from your Facebook, nothing is impossible in this newdigital age!

Sources:

http://news.yahoo.com/facebook…

http://blogs.discovermagazine….

Image Credits: huffingtonpost.co.uk, telegraph.co.uk