NASA, Twitter, and Behaving on the Internet
“EVERYONE SHUT THE [expletive] UP. I GOT ACCEPTED FOR A NASA INTERNSHIP.”
“Language.”
“Suck my [expletive] and [expletive] I’m working at NASA.”
“And I am on the Nation Space Council that oversees NASA.”
What you just read was an unfortunate dialogue of tweets from August 2018 between an excited receiver of a NASA internship and Homer Hickam, who oversees a division of NASA. The receiver of the internship was preemptively fired from it.
Now, as terrible and regrettable as this may seem, I’m sure the young woman’s life wasn’t ruined forever. In fact, Hickam himself had no control over the decision to fire her, and he went out of his way to make sure her record didn’t have any black marks, because she was clearly deserving of the internship. She’d ultimately end up being okay, I’m sure. But see how a couple of simple tweets could have changed a young woman’s life for the worse? All for one little slip. Well… okay, it wasn’t exactly a little slip, but we all make mistakes, right? Well, here on social media, that’s never mattered more.
Nowadays, it is so easy to create connections and opportunities online, but it’s important to remember that they can be just as easily shattered. Most of everything is public and the world is watching what you type (and, equally as important, what you share), and as such you must exercise extraordinary caution in what you share on Facebook, or Twitter, or even Snapchat. The question is, is that fair to expect?
It’s a two-way street, all of this. We have the opportunity to express ourselves like never before, not only to our close friends and families, but to the entire world in some cases, and as much of a huge opportunity as it can be, it can also be a huge setback if you’re not careful. We have the means to express to the world with content, but more people you wouldn’t normally think about see it; employers are inevitably going to be a part of that, and how you act matters.
As the old saying goes, what goes on the internet stays on the Internet. That alone can be devastating, especially with the ability to share information and go viral. Just as positivity can spread via online, so can the unprecedented damage of seemingly innocuous messages or content. The Internet doesn’t forget, either. By the time a post is deleted, no matter how fast you think you took it down, or how little people actually saw it, the reach of social media cannot be underestimated. It is a powerful tool. We should be expected and able to use it responsibly. It can be difficult to realize just how much social media
Some negative things that stem from what we share are less in our control, like information being stolen, as an example. Others can misconstrue the content we post and the messages we send as well, despite our intentions being otherwise. Where we can control all of this, it is essential to be mindful and teach those using social media to behave just well enough online. Our generation has been given this gift, and by all means we should use it. But you should probably keep it PG, and you’ll probably be more likely to reach the stars later in life.
