Posted by Joe Yeager on September 16, 2024 · Leave a Comment
Last updated on October 23rd, 2024 at 05:50 pm
When something about us ends up online and affects us in a negative way, I call it the Online Meets Offline lesson. It’s a lesson that we all need to learn as soon and as painlessly as possible. The problem can originate from something that happened online, such as a post someone made or when something offline, such as a news story, gets posted online. The video below shows some great examples of teenagers and young adults learning the Online Meets Offline Lesson the hard way.
Either way, once it’s online, it’s there for the world to see and it probably isn’t going away anytime soon. This is a lesson that kids often have a difficult time understanding, as McAfee software, one of the leading companies that works to protect people from learning the lesson the hard way explains.
When it does happen, they tend to fall into several “types” of incidents:
Pushback from the Public
In a case here in my home state of Pennsylvania, a teacher made derogatory comments about her students in her blog back in 2009. Even though she did it anonymously, her identity was discovered. She was fired as a result and sued to get her job back, claiming Freedom of Speech, going as far as the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, she lost her case. In more recent examples, people have lost their jobs after making comments after the attempted assassination attempt on former President Trump.
Providing Evidence of a Crime
There’s a saying that if they were smart, criminals wouldn’t be criminals in the first place. I agree and that point is never so evident as when people post (often live) about something that they’re doing, and their own post ends up being used against them in court. Here are a few examples of that happening. My favorite is the story from Utah of the man who showed himself stealing gas from a police vehicle.
Checking-In Can Cause Unexpected Problems
Even when people do what would appear to be something innocent, it can cause major problems. We all like to “check-in” on social media, especially kids. Or post pictures of ourselves having a fun time. It helps them show to others that they’re fun and maybe popular (if they’re with others).
The problem here is that it tells people exactly where you are and where you aren’t. Anyone looking for you, such as a disgruntled classmate, an ex-partner or even a criminal, knows where they can find you or at the opposite end, knows that you’re not at home, making your home a target for a robbery or other criminal actions.
These kinds of posts become part of our Digital Footprint, something that kids applying for jobs or to schools need to keep in mind. And just because something gets deleted later may not be enough – it’s better to T.H.I.N.K. (see below) about what we post before doing it to avoid problems later. An ounce of prevention is worth an immeasurable amount of cure.
Takeaway
For better or worse, we live in a world where just about everything about us has the potential to go online and go viral, even if it didn’t start there. That can help us in many ways, but it can hurt us in many ways as well. To help prevent that from happening, take the following actions:
- Keep your privacy settings to their most restrictive to keep strangers from seeing your posts.
- Avoid checking-in live – do it later and say that you HAD a great time, not that you’re HAVING a great time.
- Use common sense about what you post. When in doubt, use the T.H.I.N.K. Principle, as recommended by Fifty Shades of Purple Against Bullying. Each letter represents a specific criterion (True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary and Kind) that people should consider before they post something to see if they should hold off instead.
The Online Meets Offline Lesson is one I’ve seen people of all ages learn the hard way and the repercussions can be as mild as some gentle teasing by classmates to something as bad as losing a job or getting physically assaulted (or worse). Learning the lesson at a younger age makes it easier for it to become second nature, protecting your children for many years to come, so make sure that your children and everyone in your family takes the three steps above to help them avoid learning the lesson the hard way.
If you want to see some more examples of how a person’s Digital Footprint can affect the in the “real” word, just search for the following hashtags: #OnlineMeetsOffline, #PublicAndPermanent, or #DigitalFootprint. Some of the stories will make you laugh, and others will make you cringe, so the sooner people learn this lesson, the better they will be.
