Americans Shy Away from Posting Salary and Sex Details

April 17, 2011 at 11:50 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: facebook, social media

This just in from Obviousland:

Although many American workers have embraced social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, they are uncomfortable about sharing information about their sex lives or salaries, according to a new survey….

Only two percent said they were comfortable sharing information about their sex life or their salary details. Employees were also more inclined to share relationship status than employment status….

I’m on Facebook.  And technically also on Twitter, but I don’t use it – I don’t really get it, quite frankly.  Probably because I’m old.

But back to Facebook.  On my “friends” list, I have past co-workers, past roommates, my immediate family (except my mom who is afraid of computers because you never know when you might be attacked by rogue porn), a few members of my spouse’s family other than my antisocial spouse, a bunch of real live friends, some people from high school,  some friends I only know from the interwebernetz, and so forth.  You get the picture. I suspect that this is a fairly representative mix and is pretty similar to what most folks have on their contacts list also.

As for salaries, there are several reasons people might not want to go blabbing how much they are getting in compensation.  First off, there are a lot of people struggling financially right now and most of us know people who are unemployed or underemployed.  It’s a little heartless to be bragging about how much you rake in or even whining about how little you make because there’s a good chance there are people out there who would love to be making anything.  Secondly, many employers strictly forbid (under penalty of death!) disclosure of salary to other employees – c0-employees which you may have on your LinkedIn or Facebook pages.  And thirdly – for many people, it’s just not a good move professionally – it can cause co-worker jealousy and potential networking/jobhunting issues among others.  Bottom line – this is no surprise at all.

And about revealing the naughty stuff…..other than the fact that I have kids who were obviously not hatched out of eggs, as far as I’m concerned, none of the folks I have on Facebook need to know anything about what’s going on in The Runaway Bedroom.  And to be honest, I’m pretty sure they don’t want to know.  And I think I’m pretty normal in that regard, so it’s hardly surprising that people aren’t sharing the most intimate details of their sex lives on Facebook or any other social media.

Actually, the one thing I found curious about the survey was this:  “People living in the northeast of the United States were the least forthcoming in sharing information.”   What’s with that, Northeasterners?  Wait – let me guess.  You aren’t going to share, are you?