A reminder for everyone: Don’t get snapped by social media ignorance.

Don’t get snapped by social media ignorance.

It’s a widespread fallacy that only children make stupid mistakes when using social media. Even the age of consent assumes that adults have common sense. However as Susan Mclean, known as ‘the cyber cop’, says: “in the cyber world common sense isn’t that common.”

Everyday I see social media taking down another victim, be they politicians, doctors, lawyers or sporting stars, as we have seen with the sacking of Carlton’s Josh Bootsma.

I am not going to attempt to debate the moral issue of what he has done because it’s indefensible. The point is that, if he wasn’t a public figure, we wouldn’t have heard about it. And he almost certainly wouldn’t get sacked over it. What I will highlight is the stupidity factor that is taking down so many.

In this case, Josh used Snapchat to allegedly send images to a teenage girl. He did this under the impression that Snapchat automatically deletes the images in 10 seconds and that it’s not possible to screen shot them. The same app was behind last month’s scandal involving New Zealand Warriors NRL player Konrad Hurrell. This is a common daily illusion that traps more than 100 million Snapchat users who believe the 400 million messages sent on the app each day “self destruct”.

So who’s accountable here: Snapchat or the fools posting the images? I mean, surely Snapchat should have some accountability here right? Wrong!

People need to know that once they hit send they will never ever get something back, or be able to delete it.

Snapchat’s own terms and conditions advise that chats, images and even locations are stored on their server. It also clearly states that screen shots can be taken and some with “special features” can continue to view the images for 24 hours. Could this be made any clearer? Why are people still making this mistake?

The use of social media, and the internet in general, is so complex and yet so trivialised that the mind boggles as to how easy it is to access. The internet is faceless as people across the globe interact, and it seems to remove traditional ethics and moral responsibility. There are often no age restrictions, no associated costs, no obvious guidelines and therefore no understanding; it’s a recipe for disaster.

Instead of pointing the finger at an individual, we should be asking the bigger question: who is responsible for making sure people read, and more importantly understand, the conditions of use and how programmes use and store your data?

Does the onus lie with developers and companies to ensure they have clear and robust processes for accepting terms? Or should we future-proof against these circumstances by looking at international laws and putting better standards in place?

John Caldwell is the 2014 Victorian Australian of the Year. He is a global youth and anti-bullying advocate, and you can also see him presenting on both Channel Nine and Channel Ten. You can follow John on Twitter, here.