I was visiting my sister and her family over the weekend, and one of the topics we discussed was how her teen daughter was using Facebook.
It took a while for my sister to relent and let her get on Facebook, but she was closely monitoring her every move. The biggest fear for my sister, and many parents, is that she might say something, or post something on one of these social networking sites that could come back to haunt her.
My niece was writing posts on Facebook when I was there and I realized nothing she was writing to her buddies would be private. My sister’s glaring eyes would be watching. Even emails could be monitored. It seemed a bit oppressive to me and I wondered how a kid gets away from their parents these days.
That’s when it hit me. She could go old school and actually write a letter.
Parents are so wrapped up with protecting their kids from the Internet these days that I’m sure no mom or dad is going to waste their time reading through hand-written letters. And, a letter can be destroyed, never to be read again. Unlike the web, where almost everything you put out there is forever there.
I’m all about encouraging people to use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to connect with work colleagues and to network, but sometimes we put stuff on these sites that may be better served if they were in a letter. How about sending photos in a letter as well, instead of posting them for all the world to see? We can call it, “old-schoolin.”
This is just a cautionary post for all of us, including me, who have come too comfortable letting it all hang out on these social networking sites. Not just moms and dads, but hiring managers, your boss and maybe even your neighbors are watching.
“Neighbors?” You may be wondering.
A few months ago, I tweeted about President Obama’s decision to have the Cambridge, MA, police officer and Harvard professor — who had an altercation — over for beers at the White House:
time to have a beer with the neighbor i hate/if the prez, cop and prof can do it, i’ll face my fate.
I meant the proverbial “love thy neighbor” kind of thing. I wasn’t talking about a specific neighbor. But, it just so happened we were going to our neighbors’ house that night for dinner. They are not only neighbors but good friends of ours.
Well, the night was great but a few days the husband read some of my old tweets and came upon the neighbor one. He figured out we had come to his house the night I wrote that tweet, and it turned out we brought beers with us.
The couple didn’t bring up the tweet, but I sensed something was wrong. I found out her grandmother had passed away and I decided to write a note of sympathy and leave it in her mailbox…no email.
That night I got a call from her thanking me for the note, and that’s when she brought up the tweet.
I was mortified and stressed that I wasn’t talking about them. Thank goodness they believed me, and thank goodness she decided to bring it up in the first place. I think it was the note that may have prodded her to do so.
It was a wake up call for me folks.
We’re all mouthing off on sites like Twitter and Facebook, but too many of us aren’t really thinking about the legacies we’re leaving behind or how what we write will be interpreted.
This was all so much easier when we were old-schoolin, no? Now the world is watching.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I cannot boast of being a regular letter writer. While I have considerable skill with the English language, I find that I rarely sit down with pen and paper to write anyone. I rarely even use my PC to print letters. Nearly all of my personal correspondance is via email, or the occasional phone call. In fact, the only times I ever write letters anymore (handwritten *or* typed) are when I write a public official about a policy issue or if I’m trying to resolve a complaint with a product manufacturer.
That said, I do have an online presence at sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, though I am cautious about what I post there. I have younger relatives, neices and nephews, however, who don’t seem to understand the concept you address–that they are creating an online legacy of their personas. So many times they have posted things that make me want to scream “I’ll bet that potential employers will just love *that*!” I’ve tried to help them understand, but they either don’t get it or don’t care. They don’t see how raunchy photos, crude language, and strings of gripes and complaints about their current employer could ever impact them later in life.
There’s an old story about how Abraham Lincoln used letters to help manage his anger. It’s said that, when he was offended, he would immediately write an angry letter in reply. Instead of rushing off and mailing it immediately, however, he would place it in his desk drawer. Then, after some time passed, he would pull out the letter and review it. If it still stirred his ire, he would place it back in the drawer. If the issue no longer bothered him, he would discard the letter.
I believe many of our problems today with discourtesy are related to (but not necessarily caused by) our age of instant communications. How many people have crafted an email response that they wished they could recall almost immediately after sending it? I know I’ve been in that boat.
It’s not that we’re less even tempered today, but that we can instantaneously communicate our anger without regard for geographic space or disparate time zones. Once upon a time, it took time to communicate, and as has been said: time heals all wounds.