You know the old saying, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? That was true five years ago, but that has since gone out the door when social media came along. What “happens in Vegas” can now ruin your marriage, your career, and cause major embarrassment. Yikes! So why is it that people feel the need to share every single second of their lives with everyone they know + everyone they don’t know? 

These days Gen Y is defined by ‘instant gratification’ – they want everything now or five minutes ago.  And why shouldn’t they? They not only have the technology to do it, but they bring new meaning to the Burger King slogan: “Have it your way,” by being able to personalize each experience – from music, to television. The world is literally their oyster but can they handle all of the responsibility?

What people don’t realize is that you are your own brand. You define yourself by whether you wear glasses or contacts, by the car you drive, the purse you carry, and by the and the clothes and designers that you wear. But you also define yourself by actions you take such as: the pages you become “fans” of on Facebook, the music you listen to on Pandora, the tweets you make and the groups you join. All of these actions define who you are — the brand of Y.O.U.

Whether Facebook sells your information to advertiser, or an application you downloaded grabs your information and sells it — either way, when you put it out on the web, your thought is not in pencil anymore- it’s in INK. Just like email, it has no tone and is open to interpretation, to be twisted in whatever format people want to interpret it in. When you are looking for a job, this can hurt you. Some rules to follow:

1. Scour your social media privacy settings and make sure that photos and posts are just set to Friends Only on Facebook.
2. Make sure you don't tweet or post anything you wouldn't want your mother to read.
3. Remember the rules of email, they apply hear but are even more important- be polite, don't curse, tweets and posts have no tone just like email, so careful what you put out there for the world to see. Tweets are searchable and archived in the Library of Congress.
4. Rid of personal information such as birth year, year graduated college (includes Facebook and LinkedIn Groups of "class of xx") - this tells an employer how old you are, no need for them to know.
5. Set up a Google alert for your name so you know what people are finding out there and you can rectify any wrongdoings (albeit very hard).