March 28, 2024

Social media display

I am incredibly grateful to have grown up during an era before the prevalence of social media. I cannot imagine going through middle school and high school having to navigate the changes involved in adolescence along with maintaining a virtual presence.

Technology is fascinating. I use it every day either at work or at home. Despite my best efforts not to be attached to my phone, I still constantly have it within reach. At times on the weekends, I will leave my phone in another room and walk away, just as an experiment. It works about half the time, because unfortunately I also have an Apple Watch that chimes in on every notification sent to my phone.

The majority of those notifications are from some form of social media. I don’t think we understand its true power. It can unite complete strangers behind a common cause or it can provide a ground for complete divisiveness with no end in sight.

People find bravery behind a keyboard without having to actually say what they think to another human and it’s troubling. As soon as you hit post, those ideas are out there, in our hands, in other people’s hands and are only a screenshot away from never disappearing.

The power of social media has been on display for more than a week. The nation has been watching the “beer money” story unfold. Carson King did something most 20 year olds wouldn’t. He found himself with an influx of cash and decided to put it to good use instead of keeping it for himself.

It was a heartwarming story about raising money “for the kids.” The entire nation got to see “Iowa Nice” in action. To top it off, it was done by a guy who didn’t ask for any of the attention.

Tuesday we got to see the ugly side of social media. The lengths taken to find even the slightest “dirt” on an otherwise feel-good story makes my head hurt. There was nothing “routine” about delving into eight years of Twitter history for a background check. That is not what journalism should be about. It is moments like this that illustrate why people have a distrust in our profession. There was no need to muddy the water. The story was simple — a nice person raising money for a good cause.

I hope we have not come to a point in our world where our 16-year-old selves speaks to the caliber of person you grow up to be as an adult. I know I certainly wouldn’t want to be judged by the things I did in my teens. I was and still am an introvert. So, I’m not sure what my teenage self would have even put on social media. But I know at one point or another, I could have said something that was potentially offensive to certain people. I couldn’t tell you for sure because over the past 16 years, memories of those stupid conversations are replaced with more meaningful content, like having a good job and enjoying building my family.

Things that were important back then don’t even come on my radar now as an adult. So why could we possibly think to condemn someone for something that was posted as a dumb, 16-year-old boy?

I was happy to see the immediate support for Carson who has handled an impossible situation with nothing but class. I hope this bruise on an otherwise amazing story fades away so people refocus on the good that has come from this entire experience.

Contact Pam Pratt at pampratt@newtondailynews.com