A teenager once told my friend, “I’m not on the Internet, I’m just on my phone.”

It’s easy to laugh at how naive the idea of thinking Instagram on your phone isn’t “the Internet,” but I watch adults do this all the time.

Sometimes people confuse social media with Las Vegas. They believe that their words and actions are contained on social media. They are shocked when something they posted on Facebook 9 months ago is brought up in a job interview. They are surprised when something mean they posted gets back to the person they posted about.

But here’s the thing, what happens on social media doesn’t stay in social media. Ask any celebrity who has deleted a tweet or claimed they were “hacked” for one split second and one specific tweet. (The idea that someone hacked you, tweeted once and then you got your account back 30 seconds later is laughable. Stop that.)

Social media is not a vault. It’s a trampoline. What you do there doesn’t stay there, it bounces off loudly into the real world.

Don’t be stupid.

Don’t confuse social media with Vegas.

Question:
Without naming names, have you ever seen someone confuse social media with Vegas?