Can employers look at your social media?

Public content is fair game. Anything visible without logging in, or visible to a mutual connection who mentions it, can legally inform hiring and firing decisions in most circumstances, and surveys consistently find a large majority of employers screen candidates online. Private-sector employees also generally lack First Amendment protection at work; the Constitution restrains the government, not your employer.

The genuine legal walls: more than half the states ban employers from demanding your passwords or forcing you to unlock accounts. Employers cannot base decisions on protected characteristics they learn online, race, religion, disability, pregnancy, which is why many companies wall off social screening from decision-makers. Some states protect lawful off-duty conduct. And the sleeper protection is the National Labor Relations Act: posts where employees discuss wages, conditions, or workplace problems together are protected concerted activity, and firing over them draws federal complaints, union or no union.

The operational advice writes itself: assume public means employer-visible, and audit your privacy settings tonight.