There is certainly a cost to social media and we are seeing it more and more – people being fired and/or things they said a decade ago coming back again without being able to clarify the context.

But there is also a lot of benefit in terms of building their networks, careers, understanding or their practice by engaging in these same online communities.

There is always going to be negative approaches and our human role is not to amplify either the positive or the negative.

In this post privacy culture and world that we live in – while for now it seems that we are all going to be held accountable for the things that we said or did  in the past that have been documented on social media – it is possible that as culture shifts we are all going to be put on trial.

We are in a very weird, awkward, in-between phase trying to grapple with this issue as we are holding other people’s hands to the fire for the things that they did potentially quite some time ago.

I personally see that only becoming more problematic in the short term until we figure out as a culture how we are going to manage this.

If we have a culture that cancels people on mistake then there is no opportunity for growth, learning or evolution.

As more people experience social media shaming my hope is that more people will see that there is potential for learning, rehabilitation and redemption.

The momentum of the system that doesn’t allow for redemption or rehabilitation is so much broader than online and I don’t think we are allowing ourselves to connect all the dots.

I don’t think we are allowing our culture to even have the chance to learn or grow.

We all should be given the opportunity to have  the conversations we wish to have because if you are not willing to give someone else the benefit no one is going to give you the benefit either – and until we all experience that – nothing is going to change.

We all need to have open dialogue.