Do You Know How Social Media Can Ruin Your Life?
Woo doggy, social media can really do it to you. It can absolutely ruin your life.
Oh. My. God.
You did WHAT???!?!?!?
Quick, lemme tweet it!
No, I will take a picture and upload it to Instagram.
And I can never forget to blog it!
This kind of gaffe deserves a Facebook post, too!
Really?
So, you know what’s it like. You post a selfie taken at the ballgame. Except you told your boss that you were home sick, with the flu. Or maybe you were supposed to be with your significant other.
But, oops, you checked into a locative media site. But it was with your friend. You know, the one with benefits. Or maybe you rant against your kid’s soccer coach on X. But then he calls you out on it. Or benches your kid because of it.
Hence in May of 2014, The Boston Globe presented a half a dozen ways that social media can ruin your life.
And the article presents some boneheaded moves, including a poor choice of a Halloween costume (because evidently the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing are a laugh riot to someone out there), a Candy Crush addiction, and some poorly thought out tweets.
You Did What?
I am sure that the following will, eventually, be the kinds of behaviors that I could add to a successor article (Note: some of these are real, some are speculative. I will not name names. So you decide whether any of these have really happened, or are still in the maybe column):
1. How about claiming a permanent injury for your lawsuit and then checking in from a dance contest?
2. Or what about if you blow off a court-ordered Gamblers Anonymous meeting for a trip to the track. And adding a selfie with the dogs or horses running their hearts out in the background.
3. Or saying nasty things about your ex on Facebook or X, and your child growing up to read your sunshiny status updates.
4. And then maybe a job interview, as you tout your fine record of academic achievement, with old Instagram photos of you showing off your barely passing C-average transcript.
5. Finally, politicians caught with underage drinking photos, sexting, pictures of their junk, and a panoply of other nuggets of oversharing.
And lest we forget, this has not gone away. Remember those folks caught on the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert? That was in 2025.
I love social media but man oh man, people! But have a little self-control and some common sense.
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So, Do You Want More About Social Networks and Platforms?
So, if my experiences with non-platform-specific social networking and media resonate with you, then check out my other articles about navigating our social media obsessed world.
Social Media in Our Society
† Its Relentless Pace
• Seduction AKA Oops, Did I Do That?
† Background Check Being Used For Jury Selection
• Hope, Hype or What?
† Balance
In Addition, Social Media for Writers
• The Power of Social Media (Neurotic Writers’ Edition)
† … and Writing
• … also Writing Part 2
† … and Writing Part 3
• Are You Promoting Your Writing With Social Media?
Discover more from Adventures in Career Changing
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As they say about guns, social media doesn’t ruin lives, people using social media ruin lives :)) I think it’s important that you bring this out for your readers. It’s definitely within our power to control what we share and say around the web. Part of what’s great about social media is that it gives everyone freedom of expression, but I think people should also understand that it’s not an absolute freedom and that it’s still a good idea to think before we post something out there. A little common sense has never hurt anyone indeed 🙂