Digital Smarts - A Cautionary Tale on No Second Chances

The New York Times recently ran an article about a 15 year old girl in Nashville, TN who three years ago sent a three second video using a racist term to a friend as a celebration of getting her driver’s license. The girl is white. The person who received the message forwarded it on to another student, who sent it to another, and eventually it made its way to a male student at the same school. This student, who is multiracial, took the message to school administrators who said they could take no action because the message was sent from off school grounds. Angry at the inaction of administrators and the climate at the high school where this racial epithet was thrown around regularly, the young man saved the video and after the Black Lives Matter demonstrations last spring, put it up on social media- right after the female student had been admitted to the University of Tennessee and their prestigious cheerleading program. The young woman was shamed online and the university, under pressure, rescinded her admissions offer. She is now taking college courses online and the young man is off to college in California. They never spoke to each other directly about the incident.

While the right or wrong of this incident can be argued, what remains is that what one puts up on social media lasts forever and always has the possibility to resurface. Many teens are also finding out that when these incidents occur (no matter how isolated), they can be captured, even from apps such as Snapchat where messages are supposed to be fleeting. Second chances also seem to be in short supply for some. It is a bit of an extreme tale, but a cautionary one you may want to tell your children about.