It used to be that if you weren’t happy with someone - say your teacher, for example - you’d have a moan about that person to your friends and be done with it and go and enjoy an ice cream.
For digital natives, however – those people whose online and offline lives are often one and the same – having a moan to someone face to face is pretty much the same as complaining about them on Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube. But as they and the rest of us are finding out, it really isn’t the same.
Andrew Farley learnt this the hard way when he was ordered to pay $105,000 to a teacher who he defamed on social media.
“It was a discussion between four of my friends and it was never meant for a public broadcast,” he later said. “Just because you think you're talking to your friends doesn't mean you're safe.” These two statements show just how mistaken many of us can be about what social media actually is and how it works.
Let’s look at the term “social media” in itself. It’s “social”, meaning it provides a way for you to connect with other people and its “media”, indicating that it’s also a means of mass communication. In essence, social media is a way for you to communicate via a platform that can reach an audience - sometimes a mass audience. Or, as my trusty Oxford dictionary defines it: “Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.”
There’s the key – these sites are for networking, not for discussions that ought to be private.
It’s not just Andrew Farley. Teenager Dana Snay bragged about her father’s court payout on Facebook, recently posted as a status update: ‘Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver. Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.’
Unfortunately for her and her father, this status update was the reason her father will not be getting a cent of his $80,000 payout as it breached one of his settlement conditions.
Snay and Farley should serve as timely reminders to all of us that what we say on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter aren’t really private messages to friends.
It’s not the same as going to a coffee shop and having a chat. It’s pretty much like printing off a newsletter about all your thoughts and grievances and throwing them from the top of a high-rise building. You have no idea where this newsletter is going to land or who is going to use it for whatever purpose they want.
Websites like Buzzfeed, Mashable and Mamamia thrive off people making mistakes on social media. Not only do you have to face the humiliation of being fired from your job for example, because of an errant update on Facebook, you then end up finding yourself on a list – such as ones like this. In fact, people complaining about their jobs on social media has become such a common phenomenon an app has been developed to alert you when you tweet about something that could get you fired.
We really shouldn’t need an app to tell us that we are tweeting or posting something that could cause us to lose our jobs. We really ought to be using our common sense. If you’re about to post something that you wouldn’t want your boss, heck, even your grandma to see, then don’t do it. Simple as that. If you’re about to post something about someone that may cause them to be hurt and “grievously offended” like Andrew Farley’s teacher, then you ought to check you have a spare $100,000 in the bank.
There’s something about being behind the safety of our screen that gives us the illusion that what we type on a social media site is really not going to affect anyone. For the most part we don’t give what we write on these sites much of a thought. Except of course our words do have consequences. Sometimes very serious consequences. So next time you post something think – am I hurting anyone by saying this? Am I being unkind? Am I risking something - be it a relationship, career, or reputation- by writing this?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then stop. Think. Don’t write.
And maybe just go the old-fashioned route and talk to a friend instead.
Saman Shad is a storyteller and playwright.
