Brittany asks: I just started summer vacation, and I’m excited. There was this girl in my class who wears make-up and dyes her hair (we’re talking about fifth grade here). I also have a YouTube channel, and I made a video of me and my friend doing random stuff. At one point in it, I told that girl to jump off a cliff. I was just playing, but when this kid in my class found it, everyone saw it. It was a while ago when I posted it, but people started taking it seriously. Near the end of the year, her mom came on a field trip, and I got chewed out. She told me to take it off of YouTube before she told the principal, but I couldn’t and it never came up again. The girl also said she was moving, but she’s still one of my Facebook friends. Should I be happy, scared, or ashamed right now?
Oh Brittany, this is a lot! Let me divide it into three answers:
First, about your posting that video. This is a huge problem, as you probably know. Nobody who ever lived before now ever experienced anything like the Internet. It used to be you could say something like “That mutt across the street stinks like he rolled in a litterbox,” and even if everyone in the neighborhood repeated it, we’d be talking about relatively few ever knowing about it. But today, something goes online, and it’s instantly viewable around the world, and hundreds, thousands, millions, billions could watch it. So the good news is that you got this experience at a very early age, and so can learn the big lesson: Be really careful about what you post online. Especially if you say anything against anyone, you’ll have to live with what you Continue reading