We are living in a time where there are incalculable ways to communicate with someone. We’ve gone beyond face-to-face, letters, and even phone calls to texts, DMs, Snaps, Tweets, “TikToks,” posts, emails, and other syllables that probably don’t make sense to a lot of people.
Along with these technological advances has come another consequence — it is now easier than ever to preserve personal communications for use at a later date.
Any time you communicate with someone, anticipate and expect that it could be being saved for posterity.
Some of the good
Before I get all doom and gloom, there are a few good things that are coming from this.
While there’s nothing quite like a precious memory, you can now keep certain texts forever, either in your phone or via a screenshot, provided that your device and the “cloud” behave.
You can also look at that vocabulous treasure and remember how it felt when you first saw it.
Another arguable benefit to everything we say electronically leaving a footprint is that maybe, just maybe, people are going to have to clean up their acts a little bit.
Don’t want insults, off-color jokes, derogatory language, or other things that just look bad to be seen and shared by everyone, even if you only meant it for one person? Then don’t say them. Think before you text.
A change in communication
Now to the not-so-good.
When we’re communicating one-on-one with someone, there is an inherent expectation that we’re only talking to that particular person. What we’re saying is meant for them and only them in a context that only the two relevant people would understand.
Once something like this becomes public, it can usually take even longer to explain the words used than the message itself, and by that point, the damage can usually be done.
Imagine, if you will, having a conversation with someone in a social setting. It doesn’t have to be a particularly confidential talk, but it’s only meant for you and said other person.
What if, at the conclusion of the conversation, your partner stood up and repeated the entire thing verbatim for everyone else in the setting to hear?
Even if you didn’t say anything bad, I imagine you’d still feel some embarrassment with a feeling of “that wasn’t meant for everyone”.
Sadly, any text conversation we have with someone now needs to be treated in this manner, as if there’s a possibility everyone and their mother could be privy to it.
We’re nearing a point of having to ask ourselves, before we hit “send,” how would we feel if the words, images, videos, etc., would get out and be seen by others.
There’s really no stopping the person on the other side from showing everything behind our backs.
Any private communication we have can be made public with a simple click. Proceed with caution.
Come into the light
Before we panic and throw our phones into the lake, we can find a faith element in this concern.
If there is something going on in our private conversing that probably needs to stop, it was never totally secret anyway.
Nothing we keep in the darkness is ever hidden from God.
I could be wrong, but at the end of time, when there’s the great tellings of all of the good and the bad we’ve done, everything we’ve ever said and done that was meant to be “private” will be revealed and brought into the light.
Maybe now is good practice for that?
It’s also a call to dignity for some of us.
Just because we have something potentially controversial, earth-shattering, and any other cliché we can think of, does that necessarily mean we should share it with the world?
If we want a world of greater privacy when that very concept is at its most vulnerable, maybe it should begin with us.
Let’s stop saving and screenshotting the text and images.
If we can discern deep down something we’ve been told or shared was meant to be private, let’s keep it that way.
Yes, there are justifications when health and safety are concerned, but you’re smart, you can figure out the right thing to do.
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.