Social Suicide

This blog post is a part of  the second “What If We’re Wrong Blog-a-thon.” You can find the other posts here. The premise of this event is to play the devil’s advocate and argue the opposite view on a topic we normally cover.

In my lecture, “Selfie Sabotage” I discuss how to use social media to your advantage as a tool to promote your EMS career and increase your professional prospects. My personal experience using social media as an EMS provider has been a positive one; I have been able to advance my exposure in the industry over the past three years promoting my writing and making key connections with other EMS leaders using social media applications. Most others with an eye on improving their career prospects and the inclination or appropriate training have minimal issues with using these applications professionally or difficulty keeping their personal life out of their professional one… but we all know at least one story about a professional meltdown with social media as the weapon of choice.

Social media use is not a right. Unfortunately, most use it with abandon and no method of policing themselves or ability to pause before posting something controversial. There are reasons agencies place restrictions on their employees use of these applications; yes, you may “say” what you like, but there are always repercussions in real and virtual life.

 

• “It’s on the internet, so it must be true.” I am a fan of curation in addition to producing content, however many social media users do not check the sources behind information, whether articles or photographs, that they share with their followers. The next people don’t check their sources and share and so on until a lie becomes the “truth.” Obviously, there are entertainment spoof sites like The Onion and Gomerblog, which most understand are tongue in cheek and not real news. Outside that, what do you look like to other providers and prospective employers when you share inaccurate information on a clinical level? What if you take a “clinical” article as gospel and it’s wrong? Could that be detrimental to patients in your care? It’s up to the reader to vet their sources and sadly most don’t.

 

• Misrepresentation is rampant on the internet – and not just for online dating. It’s easy to slip past embellishment in a virtual environment; the virtual nature implies privacy and anonymity, but could not be further from the truth. I have been a witness to many conversations in chat groups or comment threads where one provider knows another and calls them to the carpet on the fib related to their stated experience or certification. I have also witnessed others researching a provider purporting to be someone their not and revealing the true status or level of their certification or employment. Not exactly the best way to be noticed.

 

• It’s much easier to put your foot in your mouth with the insulation of the internet. That ranges from outlandish tweets to insensitive memes to inadvertent missteps. The results are wide ranging: insulting patients, offending your coworkers or peers, breaking agency protocols leading to your dismissal (and possible blackballing from emergency services), to causing safety concerns for yourself, your partners, and other emergency agencies in your area.

Many EMS providers, and people at large, place too much faith in the content they find online. Just yesterday a friend posted an article that was an absolute lie, many people knew it was inaccurate and informed him; others commented and took it blindly as the truth. Posting on any social media site requires the same mindset as face to face interaction. If you are not willing to invest the time to pause before you post when you are unsure or ranting then you should limit your social media use. These missteps makes EMS look foolish as a whole.  If you don’t have anything nice to say – just don’t say anything at all.