How social media can come back to haunt you.

[JustHope]

So a little known YouTube star has been kicked off I’m A Celebrity because of comments and messages he sent in his teens. Also recently other stars such as Stormzy have had to apologise for comments made online when they were a lot younger. While I don’t condone what they said or did, I find it pretty alarming that things that people posted when they were young and naive can come back to haunt them many years later. It seems a bit unfair.

AIBU?

yanbu

Why shouldn't a boy ask to see a girl's breasts? He likes looking and she might say yes. I wonder if I am only one on this thread to have read Feyman's autobiography. I learnt a lot about male psyche from that book.

Same thing happened to Zoella a couple of weeks back, she apologised and deleted the tweets. I'm shocked that people wouldn't just delete their accounts and start afresh when they become 'famous' - although I'm not sure if they can still be found even if deleted?

YANBU. We should be more forgiving of past transgressions. Nobody has a clean slate if you look hard enough

I remember Kelly Osbourne's song lyrics having "retarded" in them around 10 years ago as if it was perfectly normal (i.e. the word wasn't being used to make a point or satirically or anything).

I do also remember at the time that it made me cringe a bit, but I agree that if a word is in general use to that extent, then you can't be surprised if kids used it and it probably didn't indicate total moral failure on their part. And the same goes for various other words that become more unacceptable over time.

Butterfr33 I think that says more about your social circle than this boyn

*Do those of you with teenage boys who are 17/18 yo who regularly use snapchat, fb, twitter etc. honestly believe that their son has never asked a girl for a dirty pic? Really?

Honestly I think half of MN is deluded most of the time.*

I've warned my child of this. Partially because it's inciting to make indecent images of children, if the girl/boy is under 18.

Plus it is fucking disgusting.

Is it deluded to try and do a little better? Maybe, but give me deluded over accepting my teen daughter will be pressured and shamed for sending or not sending.

When I was at secondary school in the mid-late 90's we kept notebooks.... they would get swapped with each other and everybody within friendship groups (and beyond!) would contribute notes/letters/drawings etc. There were hundreds of them going round.
I found a few in the attic last year, mostly full of hilarious teenage type ramblings but actually there is some quite homophobic/bullying/racist stuff in there.

I made the mistake of showing them to a friend who I went to school with, completely forgetting that there was a period at school when she was hideously bullied (sadly, whilst not a bully myself, I did not stick up for her and she became very alienated from the year group) She sat and read page after page of horrible comments about her, it has had a massive impact on her 20 years later, the trauma has resurfaced and I feel awful. This has always been the elephant in the room since our school days but I feel that irreparable damage has now been done.

I know it's not entirely the same but the messages are hopefully relevant to this thread.

It's very easy to say 'I wouldn't dream of making remarks on social media' etc but, had this situation been 20 years later you can guarantee the same comments would have been all over the latest snapchat group. I plan to keep the books to show my dd when she starts secondary school. Time is not necessarily a healer...

Is it deluded to try and do a little better?

Of course not, I'm not saying that it's right or something to encourage.

What I'm saying is that it is pretty normal for teenage boys to ask for dirty pictures. I think for some to think that this isn't the case is delusional!

For people to be shocked that a teenage boy did this is ridiculous.

I hate this culture of 'shaming' people.

Of course people were different at 17 than they are at 25, I would hope so anyway! Our opinions change, we understand more about the way the world works and the importance and significance of the language we use.

It's absolutely terrifying.

And how about when things you said privately to someone (text/e-mail... Mumsnet?) could also come back to haunt you? Have a look at the Investigatory Powers Bill.

This is the tip of a very sinister iceberg.

I hate this culture of 'shaming' people.

I don’t. I love it. I love the chickens coming home to roost.

I think that young people need to be taught with great seriousness that the internet is NOT private, and you shouldn't say anything on social media that you would not say in real life.

It would be lovely if all the pricks on Tinder found themselves unemployable down the line for all their unsolicited dick pics and misogynist abuse etc., and we can but hope that this sort of thing will become publicly associated with their real names as time goes by.

Yes, we all said and did stupid things when we were young but the difference was (at least for those of us over 35) that it stayed within a limited group. "Mary said that Claire said that Emma was a slag because she lives in a council house and her mother's boyfriend is a Muslim" (or whatever) is awful, but in 1990 it didn't really go beyond 5 people or so.

Teens today need to have it HEAVILY borne in upon them that if you say "Emma is a slag because etc. etc." on Twitter instead of to Claire, you could find yourself in serious trouble in 5 years when you run for President of the Student's Union at uni., or Equality Officer at your local council.

It is fair, because you did say it and you knew it was stupid and mean. The consequences are just worse now, and it's no harm for teens to be taught that bullying and mean behaviour is unacceptable at all ages.

And how about when things you said privately to someone (text/e-mail... Mumsnet?)

I think that the answer is just to always thing about what you say. Never post anything - even on Mumsnet - that would cause you to lose your job.

Many people seek advice here for truly anonymous situations, but I'm often stunned by the posts that say "Namechanged for anonymity: I work for an NHS unit in central Huddersfield and my line manager just had quadruplets on a plane coming home from a family holiday in Croatia (!!!), and now she is stealing office furniture every night and selling in on our local Huddersfield Mums of Multiples FB group. Should I tell HR?"

Equally, if you're going to say something by email over which you could potentially lose your job, don't send the email. Say it in person. Always be aware, really. Think before you hit send.

(You can always tell when I'm procrastinating about work, because my posts on Mumsnet are inappropriately long...)

Friggy I see that as issue as different from the one raised by the OP, (although I do acknowledge the wider connection).

Suppose I (a nobody) had sent a risque text message to someone 10 years ago - unless I suddenly become famous, no one is ever going to care. In the unlikely attempt of my making a bid for stardom, I'd consider whether I was prepared for, say, ex-boyfriends to pop up with 20-year-old emails or whatever before pursuing that goal.

Whether it would be acceptable for 'the authorities' to delve into my communications history as a private, law-abiding individual is really another issue.

But teenagers ARE taught about internet security, in fact this is part of Year 5 and Year 6 in Primary schools now.

Get real people. My son knows about this, it was discussed last night after watching The Apprentice. We all agreed that using bad language in front of a customer was way out of order. Asking fellow female pupils to show you their breasts crosses so many lines it's abhorrent. My 16 year old son said it was all part of the 'noxious and pervasive use of porn' - get him! He doesn't do social media and is high functioning autistic, but still he has friends who are not and would never contemplate doing this. They know that actions have consequences.

He was only 16 when he messaged this girl, I think things done as an adult should come back and bite you but he was a teenager.
Im the same age as Jack and i think almost every boy I spoke to on msn asked for pictures of my boobs (never sent one), most of the time completely out of the blue. I reckon with the majority of men in their early twenties you would be able to find a similar conversation, its not right but it was something that was very normal and accepted when he was 16. I am a much much better person today than I was at 16. I was a twat at 16 and you cant really hold people to account for what they did at 16

I remember Kelly Osbourne's song lyrics having "retarded" in them around 10 years ago as if it was perfectly normal

It is a perfectly normal word in American usage. I had a collegue tell me about being assessed for 'retardation' when a child. I was a bit really?

And how about when things you said privately to someone (text/e-mail... Mumsnet?) could also come back to haunt you? Have a look at the Investigatory Powers Bill.

They'd have to find you first ;-)

I don’t. I love it. I love the chickens coming home to roost.

Well, if you're 100% perfect yourself, then I guess it's fine. But I know I'm not.

With regards to Stormzy's tweets, what would have been really interesting and positive would have been for the editor in question to open discussion with Stormzy and other young black men about the way homosexuality is viewed in African and Carribean cultures, why he used the language he did, and why he doesn't anymore. It could have been an opportunity to educate, to be frank and honest and culpable.

Instead he just retweeted 6 year old tweets and called for the cyber equivalent of a stoning, it seems so pointless and futile.

Dan Wootton is the journalist who exposed the tweets. I was pointing out the hypocrisy. He is 34. He was 27ish when he wrote those.

why shouldn't a boy ask to see a girls breasts
Because she was 14 at the time and it's illegal to send nude images of children online.
Surprised you had to ask really.

Well, if you're 100% perfect yourself, then I guess it's fine. But I know I'm not.

I’m not either, amazingly. But I’d cop it on the chin if I did something wrong and it came back to haunt me. I wouldn’t be whining about how long ago it was, and how unfair the world is.

I think that young people need to be taught with great seriousness that the internet is NOT private, and you shouldn't say anything on social media that you would not say in real life.

But they would say it in real life, because the internet IS their real life. Twitter and other social media platforms completely has changed the way teenagers interact with each other, in a way that I don't think can be fathomed by people who didn't go through it.

What we all need to remember is that the internet is forever, but that's always going up be harder for teens - not known for impulse control or forward planning - to grasp.

Mumoftwoyoungkids - exactly what you said!

also a pp mentioned about these people building their career this way and having agents etc. I would suggest that if they cba to delete their internet history, they don't have a problem with it and probably haven't learned anything. It's not hard to get this stuff sorted before you go on national TV.

I do think it's quite a good guide and not sure about this "young and stupid" malarkey - if you were horrible at 18, do you change that much? Do I particularly want to forgive someone who had those revolting attitudes and probably only pretends to change because of their public image? No.

Why shouldn't a boy ask to see a girl's breasts?

#oldgimmeralert - back in my day, if a boy asked to see your breasts you knew each other in person, were "dating" (i.e. snogging regularly) and by some stroke of good luck had found yourselves in private.

Asking an underage girl to send you a photograph of her breasts (or other part of her anatomy) is illegal, sleazy and disrespectful. If she is of age, it is just disrespectful and sleazy.