My 8-year-old daughter is already asking me about things like curfews and cell phones.
I gotta tell you, I really thought I would have a few more years before I had to deal with stuff like that. I know I started parenting later in life than most, but my kids really are growing up a lot faster than I ever thought.
I think about life when I was 8 (back in 1976), and it really was a lot simpler – and better. The two-story brick house just south of Argos was equipped with a rotary-dial telephone that was on a party line (Google it), and a TV that forced you to get up to change the channel and volume with a circular knob while attached to an antenna affixed to the roof.
No satellite or cable TV existed. No cell phones. No refrigerators you could Skype from. No back-up cameras on vehicles.
Yep … the Dark Ages.
So, let me ask you to go through an exercise with me today. If you would, think back to when you were 17 years old. What kind of person were you? Who were your friends? What kind of things did you do and talk about? What kind of words did you use to describe others?
When I was a teenager, I was a people-pleaser. I didn’t want to upset anyone because I really wanted to have a lot of friends. As I look back, I went along with some things that I never should have in the name of fitting in. I participated in a few things – things that I understand a lot more about now and would never condone or endorse – that I wish I hadn’t.
“Like what” you ask?
Things like telling Pollock jokes (jokes made to make people from the country of Poland look stupid).
Sophomoric. Absolutely. And ironic considering I live in Kosciusko County, right?
But we were young and really didn’t know any better.
Sunday, 25-year old Braves pitcher Sean Newcomb was one strike away from a no-hitter against the Dodgers. He gave up a hit on the brink of baseball immortality, but in the process of the near-miss, his past was exposed.
Someone dug into his Twitter account – really deep into his Twitter account – and found messages he had posted that just about anyone would agree were vile and offensive.
Those messages were posted when he was 17 years old.
Instead of celebrating a great accomplishment on the field, Newcomb called the media back to his locker to explain that he was sorry that he wrote those things, that they were wrong, and he doesn’t see the world from that perspective anymore.
He’s the third baseball player who has had to answer questions about social media postings from their teenage days in the last two weeks.
That raises the question of whether a 25-year-old person should be held morally and socially responsible for things they did via social media when they were still in high school.
When this first came up last week, I was lying in bed monitoring my own Twitter feed and saw complete and total outrage being spewed toward Brewers fans who gave their pitcher a standing ovation after he apologized for similar messages that expressed bigotry and racism sent during his high school days.
He apologized, said he regretted writing those things then, and sending them, and they didn’t reflect the way he felt as a young adult.
I don’t know either of these guys at all, and they don’t play for the team I cheer for so I only know them by their performance on the field. I can’t and won’t comment on whether their apologies were sincere or not, or whether or not they have truly left those ways of thinking behind them.
But I WILL do something that others won’t – I will show them some grace.
Again, go back to your 17-year-old self and compare that to how you are now at whatever age and stage of life you might be in. I bet 95 percent of you have changed, and about 85 percent of you have changed significantly – of course you have! We call it growing up. It’s becoming mature. It’s meeting more people and expanding your horizons.
To be clear, a person should have to answer for that behavior. They should have to denounce it and apologize for it and explain how it doesn’t reflect who they are now.
But there are people out in the Twitterverse demanding investigations and suspensions and fines for stuff that is coming out as much as a decade after when these people were barely old enough to drive cars. It’s very heavy-handed and patently unfair.
Twice a year, I am honored to speak at Grace College during the Champions of Character Summit for students in the Northern Lakes and Three Rivers conferences. My goal is to explain to kids the positives and negatives of social media. I give them three ‘filters’ to run their thoughts through before they post them, and one of them is “Is there any chance I might have to apologize for this later?”
I also explain to them that college recruiters and their future employers will be able to go back and see what they have been posting about.
The story of Sean Newcomb is exactly what I have been trying to warn them of.
I wonder what the world of social media will be like when my Hannah and Oliver are able to have phones and be on social media?
Maybe we shouldn’t let them have phones until they’re 25.
