The recent news that a Youth Police Commissioner has had to step down due to Twitter posts she made three years ago has caused a small media storm.
The whole thing has got me thinking about social media and the generation divide on the perception of the information that is stored within it. Now, I am going to ignore the fact that she was a fourteen year old when she posted the Tweets. “Should a fourteen year old post material like that?” is a different conversation.
My post is more aimed at the generations who are in their early mid twenties and younger, who have grown up in this extremely connected world and know nothing else. They don’t see that typing material on FaceBook or Twitter or Bebo or whatever the trend happens to be at that time as an issue. There is an entire generation of people who have a legacy of data sitting on servers owned by large companies which will never* be deleted.
An event or action carried out for people in their mid-thirties and older don’t have this audit of what they have done. People between mid-twenties and mid-thirties have some, but for the generation of mid-twenties and younger, there is this trail of information that is accessible by a LOT of people.
Smart companies do trawl through things like police background checks, CV’s references. Super smart employers will review what crumbs of information exists on the open internet. If you want someone who will uphold high morales, be a conduit through to the police for the young, you kinda need the person to be in touch with whats going on but also pretty much squeaky clean. The hiring of the young girl showed that they didn’t do this.
Was she sorry? Absolutely! What she upset? You can see she was from her tearful interviews. Did she think that something that she wrote three years ago would come back and haunt her? Absolutely not.
In honesty I do feel sorry for her. Its the generation divide that has caused the problem. Her generation don’t see her were an issue. There is an emotional detachment from the posts. Almost a screen which they feel they hide behind.
The truth is very different. The information posted on the internet is a real and true representation of you. Its a virtual conversation thats recorded with everyone who reads it.
Either the oldies need to care about it less, or the newbies need to learn to control what they say on the internet. Given that law stipulates that pretty much posts are published media (along with the rules that come with it) you can see that actually the young need to change.
Or at the very least become very efficient at scrubbing their digital past when they need to…