In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine.
Apparently more and more people are unexpectedly finding themselves turning up on popular search engines because of newspaper quotes, self-published websites (or blogs for that matter... i feel like such a hypocrite) or online communities. People should periodically do this because otherwise you have no idea what there is about you. Of course, there is a good chance that somewhere in the world there is another person with your exact same name, but there still is that chance that there is important information about you. There are websites out there with the sole purpose of collecting and sharing information on people, some of which can be malevolent (you have but to type "find social security numbers" in Google to come across a few bad ones). Just do yourself a favor and find out what's out there on the web with your name on it. In some ways this is a good thing: apparently more and more companies are hiring people with a strong online persona (according to the article on Yahoo), which may be a reason why people under the age of 50 were found more likely to actually search their names. Another interesting bit of information: contrary to popular belief, teens are more likely to limit public access of their Myspace or Facebook accounts than adults.
Final thoughts: let internet grow. Just don't forget to grow with it.
(P.S. Google is still a great search engine so don't let this stop you from using it.)
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