Speaking of those tech-aware young folks

In light of recent posts about how young people are perhaps more savvy about the potential pitfalls/privacy issues of online social networking, I thought this article in today's New York Times was relevant: "An Online Alias Keeps Colleges Off Their Trail." The gist of the article, as the title suggests, is that there is a trend among high school students to create aliases for their Facebook profiles, usually starting junior year until they are accepted into college. This move stems from a fear that college admissions officials will check their Facebook pages and that what they find could negatively influences the students' chances for admission. The article also suggests that this fear may or may not be justified, something I have wondered myself. At the high school where I teach, I have heard counselors and outside speakers tell students nightmare tales of admissions officers and potential employers rejecting applicants based on unsavory images and text found on applicants' social networking pages. Not that I don't think it's a good idea to warn students about this, but I have wondered how prevalent this practice was and whether or not these warnings were solely about helping students not undermine their chances for future success. I suspect that part of it is an attempt not only to get students not to publish such unsavory images but to indirectly address the behavior itself, an approach, I think, with questionable efficacy. Now certainly, I agree with the goal of discouraging students from underage drinking and engaging in potentially damaging sexual behavior, but it always struck me as false to focus on the dangers of photographing and publishing this behavior and sidestepping the concerns about the behavior itself. Aren't we more worried that they are doing these things than that a college admissions official will find out that they are? Don't some discussions of "think before you post" tacitly accept that the behavior takes place and emphasize the idea that it's all o.k. as long as it's not made public? How can we have discussions with students about these issues that look at all of this as a whole?