Twitter turns 7 today, and here's a wish to wish while blowing out the
candles: Would someone explain why, given the slew of highly publicized cases of
embarrassing, self-destructive or career-ending uses of social media, people
keep shooting themselves digitally in the foot?
Exhibit A is Steubenville, Ohio, where graphic tweets and posted photos and
video helped convict two high school football players of raping a 16-year-old
girl. That was Sunday; the next day, two girls were arrested and accused of
making online threats against the accuser and victim.
It was merely the latest evidence that an immutable law of human nature and a
key to human survival -- we learn from our mistakes -- seems to have been
suspended online.
Dave Kerpen is CEO of Likeable Media, a social media marketing firm. "My hope is
that people will learn, and I wish I could say that they are," he says. "But if
anything, we're seeing more and more of this foolishness. I don't see it going
away."
That's because the problem is not the technology, says Steve Rubel, chief
content strategist for Edelman public relations. It's us.
"The technology just magnifies what's already there. It's an accelerant. Social
media hasn't dramatically altered human behavior, it just makes it more
apparent. If you incriminate yourself, it's more discoverable, more
distributable and more embarrassing."
Social media are an indispensable megaphone for the famous -- if they use it
responsibly -- from newly installed Pope Francis to President Obama to Tiger
Woods and Lindsey Vonn, who used Facebook this week to announce they were in a
relationship -- and to ask for privacy. For the rest of us, it's a convenient
way to stay in touch.
But no matter how many people learn their lesson about online safety --
personally or vicariously -- so many new users pour onto the Internet each month
that public education always lags behind practice.
Twitter, for instance, now counts more than 400 million tweets a day, compared
with about 340 million a day a year ago; 32 million at the beginning of 2010;
and 2 million a year before that.
And these users are disproportionately young -- in many cases more adept
technologically than socially, especially outside an immediate circle of peers.
Those most fluent in the new social technology are often least aware of its
potential dangers.
Of course, every new technology (Facebook is two years older than Twitter, the
photo sharing service Instagram four years younger) takes us time to master.
Early telephone users had to learn how begin the conversation -- the use of
"Hello!" has been attributed to Edison himself -- and how to end it. (At first,
some people simply hung up when the conversation lagged.)
It all helps explain the steady stream of new social media horror stories --
what folklorists call "cautionary tales" -- that are supposed to be
self-limiting.
Since the perilous cave days, humans have used such stories to teach survival
lessons. Classically, there's a threat (say, fire); a taboo (children shouldn't
play with matches); a violation (child plays with matches); and a result, often
grisly (child sets himself on fire).
With social media, the problem is clear: Good, old-fashioned stupidity has
become publishable, distributable, retweetable, immortal. Kerpen frames the
