Much has been written about the "Facebook effect" on our generation in publications ranging from Time and Newsweek to the Wall Street Journal. Though they provide some insight on how it continues to effect our generation, most of these articles that I've seen are written by authors over 30 at least.

They observe trends and look at its use, but the majority are still outsiders to the culture of Facebook. Having not grown up with it, or at least matured with it, they fail to understand the fundamental mentality that it produces and its effects.

In my own opinion one of the most significant dates in our generation's collective history will be the date Facebook added the photos application. This seemingly insignificant date ushered in an era of documenting every drunken night, every embarrassing moment.

The ubiquity of digital cameras in recent history hardly makes pictures of these moments new, but the ability to share these moments with all your friends over the internet on a site that sees millions of people in traffic every day is revolutionary.

To most of our generation, seeing a drunken picture of yourself at the bars on Facebook might be embarrassing but it's not something that you would lose sleep over. Therein lays the fundamental difference between generations. Ours, through sites like Facebook, has voluntarily surrendered aspects of our privacy so seeing ourselves in compromising positions via Facebook is something that we live with. Older generations have never had such an abundance of documentation of their lower moments in life.

The consequences of this are still being discovered. It's no secret that some employers are now finding ways of searching Facebook to look for incriminating photos of potential employees. Just a few years ago certain members of our own Naval ROTC unit were stripped of their scholarships because of pictures of them on Facebook underage drinking. Is this a fair way of doing things? Does a picture of someone doing a body-shot in college somehow take away from their qualities as a good worker?

Have employers themselves forgotten that they too were once college students? The response tends to be that it shows a lack of good judgment of the part of the poster to have pictures up on a public site, which then shows a flaw in character. They might even claim that they would not have done the same if Facebook was around in college when they went. Once again this shows the generational conflict and lack of understanding.

With a Presidential campaign going on now, this further proves the importance of this point. What will happen during the first election of the Facebook generation? How will politicians react to negative tactics when they themselves will no doubt have incriminating evidence against them?

Can you imagine the kind of pictures Bill Clinton or George W. Bush might have had had there been digital cameras and Facebook back in the day? I think our generation needs an informal, unspoken Facebook contract: An agreement that we will not use Facebook against each other and that when we truly come of age we will not discriminate in our hiring practices or blow things out of proportion.

Simply because someone has pictures of them drunk on a beach in Cabo during Spring Break or passed out in their freshman dorm doesn't mean that they won't be good workers or persons of character. Frankly, if by the 2020 election, a candidate doesn't have drunken pictures of himself or herself in college, I'd think something was wrong with them.