Last week I had lunch with a business colleague, Anna, who owns an interior design company. During our conversation we shared stories about things we experienced during the past year and we discussed how we were able to keep our companies on track. One of her strategies during the pandemic was to develop a robust social media presence. To achieve her goal, Anna hired her friend’s daughter, Mary (not her real name), to create and post content to her professional sites. Mary is a high school senior who has been dealing with some personal issues, mostly self-esteem related, and Anna thought this would be a good job for her as it would help foster her creativity and self-confidence.
For awhile things went well for Mary. She enjoyed the work and was good at it. Then one day, she created a graphic, which contained a typo, and she posted it to Anna’s Facebook page. Within minutes, multiple people commented on the mistake and made derogatory remarks about the quality of the social media on the site. Some went as far as to ridicule it. Mary was devastated by what was said and she took it personally. She believed she couldn’t do the job and so she quit. As Anna relayed the story to me my heart broke for Mary. This fragile, young woman was doing her best and simply made a mistake – we’re all human and it can happen to any one of us.
“Social media has provided us with a way to say what we want without ever having to witness the pain we inflict. ”
That evening I couldn’t stop thinking about Mary. I recalled the times when I saw nasty comments on our site or on the sites of other businesses or celebrities. Every time I read negative comments I wonder if the person would say the same thing to someone’s face.
Social media has provided us with a way to say what we want without having to witness the pain we inflict. It’s so easy to type a few words and hit enter. We can rip a person to shreds without seeing the tears. It has removed the personal connection from our communication; we forget there is a human being on the other side.
So, the next time you are about to make a negative, judgmental, or disparaging comment on a social media post, please stop for a moment and think about Mary. Then ask yourself … would you say it to their face? If the answer is no, stop typing and move on.