Clumsy teen years are set in digital stone

I was about 15 when I first got Facebook. Those were simpler times.

For a period I tried to forge my own distinct style, a kind of cross between The Clash and Run DMC.

I honestly don’t know what the hell I was thinking.

But a decade on, if nothing else my clobber is slightly better.

My defining look was a faux-leather jacket with a zip all the way up to the top of the hood!

In fact, to varying extents my life has changed since then.

I must have uploaded some questionable content back in the day and appeared in some compromising photographs.

The Cambridge Analytica ‘scandal’ has pushed all of that to the forefront of my mind.

For centuries human development hasn’t changed.

You’re born, you clumsily stumble through adolescence and then, hopefully, you arrive at respectable adulthood.

There’s never been a way of erasing that defining process, the difference is in 2018 that blemished past is recorded online.

There was that time you fell asleep in a pool of toilet cleaner on the floor of a bathroom after one too many bottles of Hooch. This now forms part of your ‘digital footprint’.

And no matter what you do, it will always be there.

So, the high and mighty who dismiss the outraged as fools who should have known better than to sign their lives away to online behemoths would do well to remember we were all stupid kids once.

We’ve been in an unfortunate era for a while now where people are repeatedly punished for teenage indiscretions.

This is simply because they haven’t checked their first few hundred tweets.

What is the solution? There needs to be more education for young people of the potential future issues their online activity may lead to.

There also needs to be far more comprehensive age checks and limits.

Either that or ban social media.