As graduates move away from their collegiate lives, one concern for many may be how to keep in touch with the people they have spent the last four years living with as they wonder whether they will ever see some of their classmates again.
With Facebook.com creating new company networks every day to market to college graduates, alumni don't have to think twice about keeping in touch with friends. But such inclusiveness may be more of a burden than a boon for workplaces, and as a result, many are opting to block Facebook and other social networking sites from office computers.
According to Tufts grads, keeping in touch and connecting with those around them are primary motivations for continuing to use Facebook after graduation. Christine Gary (LA '07) said that while the site helps to suck time away from work, Facebook also enables her to stay up-to-date with friends back home and from high school.
"I'm from Colorado, so with a lot of my high school friends, who I don't get to see in person, I am able to keep in touch via Facebook," she said.
According to Facebook statistics, more than half of the site's current users are non-college students, and its fastest-growing demographic is those aged 25 and older.
This popularity among the working crowd doesn't necessarily sit well with their employers. Starting soon after the announcement that anyone could join the site, many corporations - particularly financial institutions like J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup - put up firewalls preventing their employees from using the site while at work. While some companies have blocked the site to increase productivity, some are doing it to protect against spyware and viruses.
For younger employees, a lack of duty at work can cause frequent visits to social networking sites. Tufts alum Anna Martin (E '07) said that she spends a lot of time on Facebook, but only because she doesn't have a particularly demanding workload.
"I mostly use it when I'm bored at work," she said. "I think a lot of entry-level people have a lot of downtime when they're sitting in front of their computer with nothing to do, so Facebook is always there."
For Gary, excessive Facebook habits were cause for concern. Because she thought she was spending too much time on the site - both at the workplace and at home - she decided to cancel her account altogether for a period of time.
"I actually deactivated my account from December to about March because I thought I was spending too much time on it," Gary said. "I noticed that my productivity did go up [once I deactivated], but my social life went down because I made a lot of my plans through the site [when I had an account]."
Facebook can also pose problems when it comes to finding a job, as many employers have begun researching potential employees using Google.com and popular social networking sites.
In an e-mail, Director of Career Services Jean Papalia said that students and graduates alike must be careful of what is associated with their names on the Internet, and that it is important to be honest with potential employers.
"Both students and alumni should be aware that employers have easy access to these sites," she said. "As young people enter the workplace, social networking sites and blogs are increasingly used to check out a candidate. [They need to] make sure that the brand they're promoting online, from text to photos, is consistent with the image [they'd] convey directly to a prospective employer."
And Jumbos seem to realize the increasing threat that online profiles can pose when entering the job market.
"When I applied for jobs, I untagged almost all of the photos I was in. Now [that I have a job], I don't really care as much about what goes up; however, if I was applying for jobs again, I'd probably go back through and untag them again," Martin said.
Caitlin Sheehan (LA '07) had the same attitude when job-hunting.
"I'm a lot more cautious now," Sheehan said. "My profile is marked as private, which I changed when I was looking for a job."
