Years ago, I suggested to one of my relatives that she
might want to rethink her Facebook profile picture. She was about to graduate
from college, had started interviewing for jobs and had a Facebook profile
picture that suggested she liked to party extensively.
Her public profile picture was available for everyone to
see, even prospective employers. She changed her profile photo.
A few years later after a mass shooting incident in the
United States, I noticed that another relative's Facebook profile photo was of
her holding a handgun in preparation for shooting. She was not a gun owner, nor
an avid hunter. My understanding is that a friend had taken her target shooting
and she liked the photo.
After the mass shooting, I mentioned to her that her
photo might be sending a message she didn't intend. Because she has posted it
long before this mass shooting, I wanted to remind her it was up there. She
changed her profile picture.
Both of these cases remind me that many of us give far
too little thought to the things we post publicly on social media. It's too
simple to forget there are people who see or read our posts and might be
affected by them. Setting a post so it appears only to selected friends doesn't
ensure that one of those friends might decide to share our posts more widely.
Granted, it can be fun to live vicariously through a
friend's posts when he travels or experiences one of life's milestones. But
it's not as much fun when a colleague posts a long note on Facebook about how
horrendous things are at work, cites specific people and experiences and
expresses a level of frustration that borders on hopelessness.
What is the right thing to do when you are on Facebook or
another social media site and you find a colleague's anguished post on your
newsfeed because a mutual friend commented on it even though you're not a
Facebook friend of the poster? If you comment directly on the post, you might
fear coming off as a bit of a stalker because you are not Facebook friends with
the poster.
If you don't post a sympathetic response, you might worry
the poster will feel even more isolated than his or her post suggests. You also
don't particularly want to commiserate publicly about your workplace because
his or her issues with the company are not yours.
If you fear the poster is in danger to himself or
herself, the right thing is to reach out to him or her or to someone else who
might check on his or her safety. This doesn't need to be online, but rather
can be through a direct call, text, email or, even better, in person.
Too often people forget when using social media just how
magnified or misinterpreted their photos or posts can become. The right thing
for each of us is to be a bit more thoughtful about what we post. In those
moments when social media is used as a genuine cry for help, it's best to find
a way for you or someone more qualified to respond to that call.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
No comments:
Post a Comment