• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, June 8, 2007 11 AM

Parents are more reticent about revealing personal information on the Web, but teenagers and 20somethings seem to have no problem growing up in public. A report claims that nearly one-quarter of human-resources decision makers had rejected job candidates because of personal information found online. One of the most important background checks an employer can do these days is to Google prospective job candidates, and then scour the social-networking universe for their personal profiles.

The conventional wisdom is that as those who grew up with the Net get older, they'll pay the price for their youthful indiscretions that can never be removed. The big sociological question: Will society simply adapt to the dichotomy between "public" Web life and one's private offline life? Will job candidates really be held to task like politicians for something they wrote on a MySpace page 15 years ago? The newspaper says it's highly unlikely; the world will adapt.

As for pictures of beer and bong hits on a social-networking profile, sooner or later applicants will realize it's probably a good idea to take down those photos before applying for a job.

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