Have You Googled Yourself Lately?

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Added: Mon Dec 17th 4:10pm
Posted in: Computers

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OK, so be honest. Have you ever Googled yourself? C'mon, aren't you curious about what comes up when you enter your name into Google's vast search engine?

I'll admit that I've done it more than a few times. Mostly it's to see where some of my stories from previous jobs pop up. Once, just for contributing to a story about a Supreme Court decision on partial birth abortions, I found my name (luckily not my number!) listed on an anti-abortion Web site. I won't say it was a hate list, but let's just say that they didn't like what I considered to be just my straight reporting of the facts. Oh well, you can't please everyone.

But career aside, I've also done it for vanity's sake. Heck, the first time I met my now-husband, I quickly Googled him to make sure there were no outstanding warrants, marriage announcements, etc. involving him. At the time, I did not know that he was a junior, so I found a lot of stories about what turned out to be his father's activism in local issues. I was impressed that at such a young age he was so involved. So, I guess you got to be careful what you uncover. It can be deceiving!

Well, apparently I'm not alone. According to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 47 percent of adult Internet users now admit to Googling themselves (although only 3 percent said they do it regularly).

Given the growing concerns about identity theft out there, I would have thought older users would be more likely than teens to self-Google, but the researchers found that it's actually people under 50 who are primarily checking themselves out. Maybe that makes that demographic more vain. Who knows?

So, if you're not looking for yourself, who are you looking for? According to Pew, 53 percent of adult Internet surfers copped to looking up information about other people (read: past sweethearts). If I want to get a good Christmas gift from my husband, I won't admit if I've ever done any sleuthing on lost loves (given my curious nature though, I'm sure you can guess for yourself!).

I'll leave you with one final interesting nugget from the study: Teens are more likely than adults to restrict who can see their profiles on social networking sites like ours. So, I guess all our lecturing about not talking to strangers is paying off.

But for you adults out there in GrowingBolder.com land, I say keep your profiles public if you feel comfortable so that we can all be friends. Who knows, I may Google you next!