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Written by Maddi Roman|

As if the high school years need more drama. Founded in March of 2006, Twitter is how many students express their views and collaborate with one another. The popular social media website is a great tool in the area of communication. It is used by businesses, celebrities, organizations, and for many other promotional activities. The verdict: we don’t realize that by sharing our thoughts online, we are documenting them in an archive that will last forever.

Twitter is great as a form of entertainment and often times, a tweet is sympathy. A retweet is similar to saying, “I understand you, and I want to acknowledge that fact,” or “the same thing happened to me!” I and many others cannot get enough of Twitter. Every chance we get, we scroll through the feed, laughing, agreeing, and most of all: judging. As people, we already say things without thinking that we later regret. Twitter makes this problem significantly worse.

Intelligent, kind, and involved people can virtually ruin their lives with this website. We all have inappropriate thoughts and controversial opinions. The problem lies in the fact that as adolescents and young adults, many of us fail to realize that it is important to have a filter over our mouths. Twitter can be an enabler for controversy, as well as make life harder for many.

Twitter is more public than any other social networking site. Many users prefer to remain public, rather than private, because they want to be retweeted in order to get the full “Twitter experience.” On Facebook and Instagram, a user isn’t compromised or limited by their decision to make their account private. When trying to get hired at a new job, I am sure that a prospective employer will Google a candidate’s name and love the first tweet they read: “Got so drunk last night #turnup.” I apologize for the obscenity, but this is not an exaggeration; this is the truth. It is human nature to want to express our opinions and tell our friends about the crazy things we have done. What we fail to realize is that the audience Twitter draws is more than just our closest friends. With an audience of 500 followers, and the rest of the world, we want to leave a good impression.

Countless “Twitter fights” have ensued over the years, many of which are virtually pointless. They usually begin with an “indirect tweet” that someone acknowledges as being about them. This causes the entire Twitter community to take sides, attack people, and to indirect tweet their opinions as if to add kindle to a fire. Friendships are ruined over things that were never actually said, but rather, written.

I believe that we should not care what others think of us, however, we still have to be careful about what we post. Sharing our opinions is not worth losing job opportunities or something as simple as respect. Don’t turn yourself into your words.

Think before you tweet.