Online Presence

My parents have always threatened that colleges would see all of my text messages, Facebook posts, and little comments on twitter, but I never took them seriously until recently. I questioned my mom's credibility and thought she was just trying to scare me into keeping my act perfect on the internet. Not only is it important to stay professional on various blogs and social medias for the sake of the future and adulthood, but also for the effect comments could have on peers today. Cyberbullying has become an extreme problem with our society today since the web allows us to hide behind a screen. Anything you say on the internet can come back to haunt you, and it could seriously harm others too if you aren't careful. Deleting may seem like a solution, but the rate that teens nowadays check their medias and take picture evidence of things that are said and done is incredibly high. Gossip spreads like wildfire, and it really got me thinking. Whenever I try to be careful what I say on the internet I usually think that it won't matter, maybe a little curse word isn't so bad, there are other people posting things ten times worse. However, the little devil on my shoulder telling me something isn't right is usually an indicator to just leave it be. In the future I hope to hold myself from posting anything that my mind has second thoughts about, and maybe even deleting social media as a whole. All it seems to do with my life is waste time I could use for other things and start drama. The online footprints we leave show who we are, but we cannot let them overtake and define us. Self control people, self control.