I listened to an interesting podcast on Gimlet Media the other day. It was called Silence and Respect and it was about the powerful impact social media can have on our lives, even if our own participation is limited.

The story was about a young girl and how complete strangers banded together on social media to criticize her actions and literally destroyed her. Lindsey Stone was victimized online and there was nothing she could do about it.

I was impressed by Lindsay's inner strength and her ability to handle the terrible consequences of her little joke posted on social media. She was hounded, called names, ridiculed, and threatened. She was shocked, became reclusive and stopped leaving her house. Through all this, she did survive and received help to rebuild her online presence. What has happened to countless others who were not given that second chance?

In The Future of Privacy in Social Media, it is clear that adults look at social media a little different from youth today. Many kids have grown up with social media and have used it as a way to keep in constant contact with their circle of friends. Social media is their hangout. They text through their phone apps, they send messages through Facebook, they tweet the latest information. In school, students use social media to find out where their friends are, what is being served for lunch, catch a ride home, check the score for a game, find out if there is a pop quiz, and so on. Some schools filters out or blocks Facebook. So how do the kids overcome the site blocker? They get their parents to pay for data.

Are the kids responsible enough to make sure any inappropriate text or image of themselves does not get on the internet? Are their parents responsible enough to make sure their children understand the consequences of a carefree attitude in posting whatever is deemed of interest in the moment, even though it may take a lifetime to clean away the post?

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