There have been a trinity of recent news stories that should make anyone aware that the use of Facebook may not advance your career. In particular, the stories merely confirm that using Facebook, or other social media, aside from the obvious productivity issues it creates, may cause one more trouble than anticipated.
The most recent news story involves a woman who called in sick because she was allegedly ill and needed to lie in the dark and away from the computer screen. She was allegedly caught using Facebook that same day and lost her job. Similarly, a Philadelphia Eagles employee (the Eagles are a football team) lost his job after disagreeing with the team’s decision to let go of a football player on Facebook, calling the team “retarded” (in the Eagles defense, Brian Dawkins doesn’t have much left in the tank but I digress).
The third news story, which has received a lot less coverage given the local nature of the story, should really send shivers up one’s spine. Leduc v. Roman is a motor vehicles accident case in Ontario. Leduc alleges that, as a result of Roman’s negligence which caused a car crash, his enjoyment to life has been lessened.
As part of Roman’s defense strategy, his lawyers asked that Leduc produce the contents of his Facebook page- even though it was on restricted access (which meant that you could only see Leduc’s name and photo)- to determine whether his claim that his enjoyment of life had been lessened was true or if Leduc’s Facebook page revealed the opposite of his claim.
Leduc won the initial motion to deny production of his Facebook page but lost on the appeal with Justice Brown, who issued the decision finding: ("t)o permit a party claiming very substantial damages for loss of enjoyment of life to hide behind self-set privacy controls on a website, the primary purpose of which is to enable people to share information about how they lead their social lives, risks depriving the opposite party of access to material that may be relevant to ensuring a fair trial.”
In other words, the contents of any of your social media page (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn etc.) can be disclosed to third parties for their use if they can prove relevancy in seeking such disclosure.
The implications of this decision, which many legal scholars believe would likely be adopted in the rest of Canada and the United States, could be quite far reaching. Remember that disclosure was given to a restricted access page. An employer or potential employer could similarly argue that they need to see your social media page as a back-ground check, to measure productivity (even if your work locks out sites, you can still use a smart phone to post on social media) or to dismiss you with cause if you post negative remarks about your employer (see the Eagles employee above). You post, regardless of privacy settings, you may have exposed yourself.
What does this mean to you? While social media is increasingly being used as a job hunting tool, it is also a double-edged sword. By the intention of making your private life public, one is essentially declaring that you are free game for your current or potential employer.
While Facebook is in the process of allowing users to create multiple profiles, I am not sure this will actually have much legal weight if a third party argues that disclosure of all profiles is required for a relevant purpose. In other words, it may be time to scrub your social media page. 
