Social Media against Job
Applicants
Kevin Busenbark
MIS 311
Intro to Information Systems
MIS 311 Research Paper AssignmentOctober 18, 2014
Introduction
The birth of Web 2.0 has brought with it a massive influx of web traffic to newly developed areas
of the World Wide Web such as blogs, video sharing, and social networking sites, just to name a few. The
internet has grown incredibly since the beginning, which started several decades ago, and now continues
to grow exponentially into our present day and future lives. It should come at no surprise that many
people have taken to this new age of development and have helped add to the ever-growing World Wide
Web every second of the day. With the Web 2.0 technology giving anyone with web access the ability to
add their own spin to certain parts of the web, and with the introduction and popularity of smartphones,
people can add to the vast expanses of the internet from virtually anywhere at any time.
It is legal, but many would argue that a prospective employer should not be allowed to view the
life that prospective employees portray on their social media accounts. To make this clear, the employer
can view the information on your social media websites, but there is certain information that is illegal for
the hiring employee to “use” during the hiring process. Since it is very difficult to prove if this information
has been used in an either legal or illegal way it makes sense for an employer to not perform these
internet searches, this idea leads to the thesis of this paper: “A prospective employer should be legally
mandated, by amending the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 to encapsulate modern day technological
advances, to use a third-party investigative company to uncover any social media information on
American citizens applying for a job.” The reason for establishing this amended law is the third-party
companies, are sanctioned by the Fair Credit Reporting Act and, will “filter” the information for the
employer, keeping the employer within the legal boundaries of antidiscrimination laws such as Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and American with Disabilities Act of 1990. Hiring managers are not
sanctioned by the FCRA.
This paper will explore the laws that are potentially abused when a hiring manager uses
information from a social media outlet in the hiring process. Laws being looked at are Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, including the amendments of Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, Title I and Title V
of the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of
