I had an interesting breakfast conversation with my son today which made me thinking about this question. While eating my early morning breakfast I heard my wife complain that these days the kids seem to have completely lost any sense of principles and were living a wasteful life. She was commenting on some teen ager’s facebook update with pictures of another partying night with lots of drinking and other sorts of “fun” activities. She seemed clearly upset. That is when my son (who is himself a teenager) remarked that his mom’s observations were based on a miniscule percentage of somone’s life that is projected on their social networks. While it is trivial to post some pictures of some random party or other, it is not as easy to provide updates of activities that comprise of ninety percent of useful things someone is doing in their life. It is not as exciting to say I studied for 6 hours today or prepared for three AP exams or whatever. It seems like those are activities we do any way so why talk about it. Whereas a party or a great time I had with a bunch of friends is lot more juicier to talk about. This obviously is an issue because a casual observer might think all you do is partying and not other more useful things. I don’t know what the solution for this is but one suggestion is to have a balanced approach to posting on social networks. Mix up your partying postings with other useful activities you indulge in. Perhaps some leadership activities you were involved in at school or some weekend social work that you were part of. This will help project the real you instead of what might only represent a small percentage of your life activities.