FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

We Feel More Entitled to Social Media at Work, Even Though Our Bosses Can Still Legally Snoop

In the end, you’ll have to choose which right is more important: privacy or social media.

Everyone, including you and me, is using Facebook and Twitter more and more at work. In many cases, we expect that we should be able to. But we often forget that, in doing so, we're opening up our social media to the prying eyes of our employers.

Chances are one of the first things you do upon arrival at the office is check up on at least one of your social media platforms. It’s probably not in your job description, but it’s part of your morning ritual and it's a way to stay plugged in to (ir)relevant news.

Advertisement

But for many, using social media is not just a routine. People increasingly feel entitled to be able to stay connected. It's not a bad thing; social media has become so important to our lives that a lot people consider Instagram a workplace right. If your boss all the sudden announced a new policy banning personal email or social media at work, you might feel a little oppressed, and you’re not alone.

The reality is that employees spend a lot of time on social media sites during work hours. A recent study shows that a third of employees spend an hour or more a day at work on social media sites. A full quarter of the study’s subjects, which included 1,000 employees in the United States and Canada, indicated that they would not work for a company that did not allow them to use social media at work.

The results of the study performed by Intelligent Office seem to suggest that employees are beginning to see social media use as a right, rather than a luxury or business tool. But think about this: whenever your eyes are locked onto your Facebook account at work, your boss’s may be too.

Every email you send at work (including private ones) that goes through the company’s server is accessible to your employer.

We often forget that when we are at work the door is open for our employers to scrutinize our activity. Your employer can (and probably is) monitoring your work computer. In the office, unlike at home, you should have a devastatingly low expectation of privacy, and you can be certain that you have essentially no privacy rights to social media communications from work computers.

Advertisement

In this new study, just one third of employees admitted to using social networks for an hour or more per day, but in actuality, just about everyone in an office is probably checking some personal network or email at some point. Even way back in 2009 studies showed that 77 percent of Facebook users used the site at work. And “one hour a day” is likely a veiled way of saying “almost my entire work day,” because I know plenty of friends who are wasting spending two or more hours a day just on Gchat.

With everyone going hog-wild with social media on the clock, they fail to remember that if you do it from your work computer, you are waiving certain privacy rights with respect to that online activity. Your boss has access to every click. They can use keystroke trackers and your monitor your internet history. They can look at downloads, stored files, and internet messaging and chats. And while the specific laws will vary state to state, it should be apparent that you should have no expectation of privacy on your work computer. It goes all the way to the top: an employer isn’t barred by the 4th Amendment, which only stops the government from unlawful searches. (Occasionally.)

Every email you send at work (including private ones) that goes through the company’s server is accessible to your employer. The same principle applies to messages within social media platforms. Even under federal law, an employer can listen to your phone calls until they figure out that it is personal in nature. Likewise, all your text messages from your work phone are just as searchable, because as the Supreme Court held in Ontario v. Quon, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy on your work phone.

Depending how you use it, social media is either a valuable business tool or a steamy dump of mindless blather. In either case, we feel entitled to be able to login and post while at work; for many of us, it’s the only way we can make it through an eight hour day. Whether we use it to be productive, or out of boredom, laziness, or pure insubordination, we have forgotten that working hours aren’t personal or private. Every time you log in at work, it’s like letting your boss log in as well.

In the end, you’ll have to choose which right is more important: privacy or social media. Since employers want to limit their liabilities (e.g. harassment suits, disclosure of trade secrets, theft of company time), it has historically been rare to find an employer who actively allows employees to use social networks on their own computers.

But with companies seeking new ways to remain relevant and productive, they may ask employees to pursue leads and sales through social media platforms. Just remember that logging in at work, even at the boss’s behest, may waive your right to privacy.

Top image via pursuethepassion/Flickr