So, while driving home from practice last night, I found myself pulled into a discussion about how people can make assumptions of your character based on the people you associate with or the things you enjoy. Now, baring anything too in depth, I found myself responding to the news that one of the children in the car received/watched a recent video shared to them on Facebook of a horrific assassination. It wasn’t a very long clip, maybe a minute, with foreign dialogue sprinkled in here and there, but I felt compelled, by notion, to participate in this dialogue. I felt disarmed that a family member was privy to such imagery, without supervision, on Facebook.
I’ve always furled my brow when it comes to Facebook’s share feature, as as a child’s friends(peers) are more than likely to posit the images and videos of a highly adult subject matter than the adults who follow them(family). I went into this exact point, making sure to explain that maybe you should unfollow this friend, for their won’t to share very adult material prove to be disastrous someday, to which the entire car fell silent.
In fact, and be it far for me to exaggerate, not one person said a word as I explained the various ways someone looking at a person’s social media feed could make stark character assessments of said person without ever really knowing them. I went further by adding “a minor, a child should be free of violent, pornographic, and vulgar content, whether through a friend’s Facebook/Twitter/SnapChat share or other social platform.”
Again, silence.
I thought for a moment, wondering if I were yelling, that perhaps the child and audience found my commentary too castigating, but no. I was not. I spoke in matter-of-fact tones. I never once grew upset–for you see, I didn’t know it at the time, but if I had caught myself mid-sentence, perhaps holding onto my full-stop a second longer, I would have heard the proverbial “eye roll” and sigh coming from the cabin of the car.
No one child spoke.
They listening to their iPhones/iPods or looked out the window.
No one adult spoke, whether in support of or indifference to my stance.
Silence.
They weren’t responding out of wanting to hear more.
They weren’t responding because they just wanted me to shut up.
So, I’ll shut up.