• by Rashieta , October 13, 2010

I am a member of the Black Student Association on Ball State's campus. Every meeting, once a week, we have a "Real Talk" segment of the meeting where we discuss issues in our community. This week a group of members organized skits to represent social networking awareness.

One skit was about a group of girls who were avid Facebook users. One girl posed as the "holy type" who was church bound. The other two girls were party animals. The church girl was trying to encourage the other girls to attend church and "get wasted in the spirit." The church girl left the party-goers behind, and they talked about her behind her back. The girls discussed how their friend was fake, because her Facebook page was full of profanity, incriminating photos and inappropriate comments, but she claimed to be so religious.

The moral of this skit was to present the world with the truth of who you really are. You should be aware of how you present yourself to the world. Not only does this hurt your reputation socially, but on a business level as well. Many employers look at Facebook pages to help decide whether or not they want to hire candidates. Controversial photos and comments could hinder or cripple your future. If you are already employed, in some cases, if you make poor choices you could risk losing your job.

I really appreciated the fact that other peers viewed this topic as important and I think it helped in spreading the awareness of social networking etiquette. Most of our parents assume we millennial don't think about our futures and are unaware of the dangers of social networking.

I was happy to see a room of at least 100 students expressing their concerns and offering advice to each other on how we can conduct ourselves in a positive manner online.  I hope this trend continues and trickles down to those in high school who seem to live online.