I think, this is largely a clash of the new and the old perceptions of what is considered "normal" at any given time.

There used to be a time when speaking out publicly was a big no-no for therapists. At the inception of the Internet it was unacceptable within the professional community for a therapist to have a website and later it was unacceptable for them to be active on social media or to use it at all. This attitude was justified by the notion of "client's benefit". These days I don't think anyone in the right mind would believe that it's unacceptable for a therapist to have a website, a social media presence and to be publicly outspoken about what they believe in and what they care about. Just like no one these days or in the last century would demand that we go back to riding horses instead of driving cars. Internet and online presence and being connected to the entire world where all the information we need is at our fingertips have become an organic part of our life, and with that "looking up" anyone online has also become a normal part of life just like using credit cards and cell phones for processing payments instead of checks and cash...

..Speaking of which..Once, when I was in my post-graduate training, we had a discussion just about that, about taking credit card payments from clients, which most therapists here, in the US are still not doing. Our instructor told us that she will never use card payment processing..guess why? Of course, for the "benefit of clients". For some crazy reason that I still can't understand she believed that professional boundaries are much more enforceable when you take checks or cash only.

The culture has changed and with any cultural change the ideas of what is and isn't acceptable, moral, ethical a.k.a "normal" also change. In fact, it was never unacceptable to look at publicly available information even before the Internet. The fact that now people put so much more out there doesn't change the fact that whatever they put out is public and that they made a choice to make it available for anyone to see. It's just in the old times, it'd take a considerable amount of time to obtain even publicly available information. Now, it takes a couple of minutes..So, no, therapists don't need to have so much time on their hands to look someone up online, it takes just a couple of minutes, and, no, nobody is "spying" on anybody. For those who didn't get the memo, it's the 21st century and looking at people's profiles online is a NORMAL behavior of everyone who chooses to live in the 21st century. .And, no, no one is taking away the client's choice how much they want the therapist to know. The client makes that choice any time they post anything online. When they post things on public domains they should assume that anyone, including their therapists, could look it up. If they don't think about that when they post, it's their problem and no one, including their therapist, is in a position to think about that for them. Adults should think for themselves.

The fact that a big part of our life is a virtual reality absolutely has its dark side, but that's the nature of the beast. Trying to stop a natural evolution by clinging to the old rules of conduct won't solve this problem. May rules and cultural attitudes have changed with the Internet and are continuing to change. You can't stop those changes. You either go with the flow and adopt to the new reality or suffer.