The hardest problem with blogging every day, and working in a small school environment is that a lot of content I want to share, I simply can’t. I started writing a post just now and realized it would be too easy for people close to the school to know which student or family I was referring to. I wasn’t writing anything bad, but the specifics of what I wanted to share would make it so that it was clear who I was talking about… and that’s not fair unless I ask permission to do so.
Often when I talk about my family, I’ll say ‘my daughter’… I have two daughters and don’t usually mention who I’m talking about by name. Again, I’m not saying anything disparaging, but I’m trying to be respectful and not bring them up when I wrote something at 5:30 in the morning and set it to be published a little later that morning, but before I speak to either of them.
I’m often surprised to see people sharing video clips or Facebook posts where it’s obvious the person they are talking about (often family members) would surely disapprove of or be unhappy to have shared. But this seems quite commonplace these days. I think “reality” TV shows promote this. The ‘Real Wives of [[Any City]]’ is an example of this. They backstab each other knowing full well that the person they are backstabbing will see them do it on the show… and then they face each other later with smiles on their faces like there was no harm done.
It’s like these shows grant people permission to be jerks who (over)share things that really should never be shared publicly. But other people’s bad behaviour really shouldn’t influence us to do the same. Some things are better off not being said, or written, in public spaces.
I think sometimes it’s just best to ‘zip it’, and let some things stay in your head, and not be shared ‘out loud’ in any format. I wish more people thought this way too. Maybe the sample size of my school is too small to make generalizations, but I think kids today get this more than the kids of 5-10 years ago. I hope this is a positive trend that catches on.
