What to do when you regret a social media post, explained

The internet is an archive of so many different versions of ourselves. If you're part of Generation Z or the Millennial generation, there's a good chance you've preserved almost every part of your life online: old fandoms, old friends, old opinions. And with that comes an inevitable shudder.

So what do you do when you see something embarrassing that you posted years ago? You might be tempted to go for scorched earth, but journalist and Wall Street Journal contributor Alexandra Samuel says that's not necessarily the best course of action. “I think that you need to think about deleting things that you have posted as a curator,” she told Vox.

“The Internet Archive saves snapshots of all sorts of things on the Internet. So you have to be aware that if you delete something, it may be deleted for you,” Samuel said. “That doesn't mean it will be deleted from the internet. I think when you delete things, it's always a good idea to back them up before deleting them.”

What other options do you have when you look back at an old post and cringe? And how should we think about the digital archive of our lives? We answer these questions explain it to me, Vox's weekly call-in podcast.

Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Samuel, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode here Apple Podcasts, Spotifyor wherever you get podcasts. If you would like to ask a question, email askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.

Was there a moment when online regret and shame first caught your attention?

Absolutely. In June 2011, Vancouver lost the Stanley Cup to Boston and people went crazy. There was this uprising in the streets, and what made this uprising so notable was that it was captured in real time on social media for the first time. It was the heyday of Twitter. People tweeted photos. People made videos and posted them on YouTube. There was initially a lot of excitement about the idea: “We'll be able to catch the people who are flipping cars and breaking into store windows.”

I saw this literally play out online that evening. And I thought, “That’s not a good plan.” History teaches us that when we start harassing our fellow citizens and slipping into this quasi-surveillance role, things can end very, very badly. That evening I wrote an article for Harvard Business Review about why this phenomenon of citizen surveillance through social media is so problematic. And I got a lot of headwind.

It's interesting that so many people's gut reaction was, “Okay, but what if I snitched?”

I think there's something really gratifying about outrage as a subjective experience. We live in a really complicated world. There is a lot of gray. There are many nuances. It's really hard to feel like a morally upright person when you're shopping on Amazon and putting gas in your car. And these moments when we shame people online give us a small moment of moral high ground.

What is the argument for not deleting old posts?

Imagine a scenario where you posted something on Instagram or TikTok. You realize afterwards that you were kind of an idiot and wish you hadn't said what you said. Maybe you even had a back-and-forth in the comment thread where someone pointed out why what you said was insensitive and you showed some ability to learn. If you delete it without archiving it [and] It comes back to haunt you, you don't have the proof that you've learned. It's much better to take the screenshots, archive the thread and save all the context so that if it still bothers you or you just want to think about it, [you can].

I don't know if you've ever gone back and read old diaries, but I have. And every time I think, “What my old man thought is none of my business.”

It's funny you said that. I literally had the exact experience of re-reading old magazines. We all just need to realize that, by definition, everything that is a snapshot is a two-dimensional image of something we have experienced. Whether you're looking at your own story of something you've done or you're looking at something someone else has said, I just wish we could have a little more tenderness and empathy and focus on what people learn and how we grow instead of judging everyone based on their most terrible moment.

Do you have any advice for best practices for having a social media presence that you won't be ashamed of in 10 or 20 years?

Trying to have a social media presence where you never have any regrets is a recipe for a completely meaningless and stupid social media presence. Conversely, I think it's important to resist the temptation of the hot attitude. You have to try to find a middle ground where you don't encourage controversy for its own sake. When you intentionally get on people's nerves, you end up saying things that don't reflect what you really believe. But if your goal is to have a social media presence where you never have any regrets, then you definitely shouldn't be online. I actually think it's a really, really good option now. If I wasn't a journalist for whom part of the job involves appearing online, I don't know if I would still use social media.

It sounds like this feeling of regret might be inevitable when sharing something online. How do you survive it?

The first thing you need to do is stop yourself from depersonalizing it and thinking, “If this happened to a friend, what would I be thinking here?” Don't hesitate to admit when you think you're wrong, but don't rush to answer either. You have to close the computer, hang up the phone and walk away. Talk to someone with good judgment and ask what they think. The internet moves fast, but unless you're a celebrity and get a hundred thousand replies an hour, there's really no reason why three crappy comments can't wait to be answered the next day.

And then you can absolutely say you're wrong. In fact, I think one of the most powerful things we can do as people, as professionals, and as internet users: show that you can be wrong, on the internet, and that it won't kill you. It doesn't destroy your value as a human being.