The Social Media & Employment Report

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok have revolutionised social lives and have had a big impact on how we connect, learn, remember, and even how we work and find jobs. For young people who have grown up using social media, the digital traces of life generated through social media use can also represent important personal histories. However, as young people move into professional lives, their past disclosures can, for better or worse, be resurfaced. What one says and does on the internet can persist, potentially having a negative impact on young people’s futures.

This project investigated how young Australians use social media, how they represent themselves on social media when preparing for employment, and how employers use social media for making employment decisions. After rapidly redesigning the study in the context of COVID-19 and stringent lockdown measures in 2020 and 2021, we conducted 13 focus groups with 72 young people aged 16-35 (average age 22.5) and 12 interviews with managers and recruiters who used social media to vet job applicants, all via Zoom. We also conducted an extensive content analysis of 312 international news media stories on people losing their jobs because of a social media post, and an analysis of 36 school technology policies that often covered social media use at school.

Our key findings are:

1. Many young people are acutely aware of being surveilled and seen on social media (by peers, family, and both current and future employers) and for some this manifests as anxiety about being ‘cancelled’ (or the possibility of reputational harm) in the future.
2. The extent to which young people learn about the relationship between social media use and ‘professional identity’, and how to manage privacy on social media, varies significantly and is shaped by peers, parents, and schools. 
3. Schools tend to take a conservative approach to discussing social media use in their public policies, focussing on risk and bullying. 
4. Contributing to a focus on risk are numerous news stories about people being fired from their jobs due to a social media post (made by themselves or a third-party where they are featured) demonstrating a public interest in these stories. 
5. Some young people use social media to their advantage to find work, including in creative fields such as illustration or drag performance, but also as aspiring influencers and content streamers. 
6. Young people employ complex and varied privacy management strategies when it comes to social media including maintaining multiple profiles on the same platform, using aliases and pseudonyms, segregating audiences both within and across platforms, and using different platforms for different purposes.
7. Recruiters are using social media platforms in their hiring practices. This is either using platforms such as LinkedIn to recruit employees directly, or screening personal social media profiles of applicants to determine suitability for a role and judge ‘team fit’.
8. In schools and families, there is a need for more holistic, positive discussion of social media as a tool for young people that is not just focussed on risk and catastrophe but also acknowledges pleasure, fun, and the productive capacities of social media.

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council (DE190100858).