Racial And Ethnic Discrimination In Social Media Essay

The number of Americans joining the social media has been increasing since the past decade. As of 2017, almost 81% of Americans have a social media profile[1]. Thus, finding information about someone on the internet is easier with the digital footprints left behind by such users along with the powerful search engines [2]. I was surprised to see my personal data on other uncommon websites that seemed to be scraping my Facebook and Instagram profile. Hence, with more availability of the personal data, job seekers can be subjected to profiling by employers [3]. In fact, 70% of the employers screen candidates using social media [4]. Racial and ethnic discrimination by employers along with potential misrepresentation of information on the social media platforms can cause a deserving candidate to lose her/his job even before interviewing[5],[6]. I strongly feel that protecting one’s privacy is needed to make it difficult for companies to search for any personal information. There could be legal consequences for what companies currently do by pre-screening candidates using social media [5]. When searching for one’s personal information becomes arduous, employers will get back to their regular or conventional hiring methods and judge fairly on the applicant’s competence. LinkedIn is a popular platform where one can upload and regularly update their professional …show more content…
It is difficult to define a universal policy for social media screening and hence people should make extra efforts to protect their privacy to combat the company's unethical methods of social media screening. To prevent external scrutiny, whether it be employers or be it your fiance’s family, increasing privacy in the social media platform is necessary to prevent people from making an inaccurate impression of