You have no idea how many unaware silly children are ruining their careers right now using social media sites.

Do you actually believe this idiotic horseshit?

Every sane, rational adult remembers all the wacky things they did as kids. And all the things their brothers and sisters did. And cousins. And friends. And neighbors. And stories about their parents told by their grandparents to amuse the whole family.

All young people are silly and ridiculous and immature. By definition they are immature. Every normal adult knows this.

So here's what is going on. An HR weenie looks at two candidates. Candidate Skippy has pictures on SocialSpace at age 15 carrying a giant cardboard pot leaf. Candidate Xavier went to rehab for cocaine twice by age 19 and was nearly arrested for rape, but never cared about posting off-the-cuff pictures on SocialSpace.

A normal, competent HR weenie knows that submarine candidates like Xavier are corporate death. They are pretty much guaranteed to cost some employer a gigantic amount of money, and quite possibly bankrupt the company. This same normal HR weenie also knows that Skippy is a perfectly normal job candidate whose moment of fun in the dusty past has no relevance to today. If anything, Skippy probably will help the people around him be happier and more productive.

This is why competent HR weenies ask questions like "Tell me about a time that you failed." Skippy will flounder and come up with some lame story (= hired). Xavier will take it personally, turn red, and be angering at the HR weenie (= so very not hired). Hiring people is not about weeding out obvious little problems, it is about discovering hidden horrors that will cost the company millions (or literal billions, in the financial industry).

But not all HR weenies are competent. A few are stupid, or crazy, or never matured into actual adult thinking patterns. These people will ding Skippy because they actually think he is a dangerous drug fiend, or because he is obviously from an enemy clique and they are still fighting high school battles at age 45. They will support Xavier because he has such a good face and strong handshake, or because it is simply impossible for them to imagine that hidden problems can possibly exist. Good companies aggressively weed out HR weenies like this. They know that dangerous candidates have made a career out of pretending to be good candidates, that appearances cannot be trusted.

If you are desperate for a job, you can create a fake social media profile to impress the second type of HR weenie. But do not kid yourself, you are not working on your career, you are just serving time at a second rate filler job. If you want an A player career working with awesome people, create a superficially eye-opening social media profile so the morons will automatically filter themselves out.