Successfully Navigating Today’s Digital Communication Environment Requires Caution & Constraint
6/27/25 – – The U.S. State Department recently announced a new screening requirement for student visa applicants. Their “online presence” will now be reviewed to help determine if they “intend to harm Americans and our national interests.” International students wishing to attend one of our colleges or universities must “adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to ‘public.’”
This heightened level of scrutiny (and loss of privacy) underscores the dangers created by online communication for individuals and companies. In today’s interconnected world, all our posted expressions live on forever, whether we want them to or not.
Online Temptations Abound
The ability to share our thoughts and connect with so many others with just a click – – unprecedented in human history – – can cloud good judgment. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer described tweets as, “a direct conduit from the unfiltered id . . . they erase whatever membrane normally exists between one’s internal disturbances and their external manifestations.”
Social media, messaging and emails can be treacherous environments not just for young visa applicants. Chatty executives, who should know better, are also susceptible to its temptations.
- Jon Gruden, head coach of the National Football League’s Las Vegas Raiders lost his job and his reputation after The New York Times published ugly emails he sent to NFL executives a decade earlier.
- John Demsey, a 30-year Estee Lauder Cos. employee who managed a portfolio of brands including MAC and Clinique, lost his job and multi-million-dollar salary after posting an offensive meme on his personal Instagram account.
- A CBS in-house attorney, commenting on Facebook one day after the 2017 massacre by a gunman of scores of people attending a country music festival in Las Vegas, was fired the day after she posted this: “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”
Risking Your Future for Validation
It’s a lot easier to understand inappropriate social-media behavior by high schoolers on Tic Tok than it is to make sense of digital recklessness displayed by business executives on LinkedIn. But I believe the temptations for such personally destructive, disqualifying communication are similar for social media enthusiasts of all ages.
In The Crisis Preparedness Quotient I cite analysis by psychotherapist Emma Kilburn, who got to the heart of the matter (before Twitter became X) in a welldoing.org article titled “Why Are We So Addicted to Social Media?”:
“Social media platforms encourage us to focus on the validation and recognition they can provide. If you post a picture on Instagram, your notifications will tell you how many people have liked it. The more the better, right?! If you tweet a response to an author, politician, or comedian on Twitter and they like your tweet, you feel proud, and seen.“
Constructive Connection Requires Caution
How can companies and individuals prevent errant posts that turn into digital debacles?
- Regularly remind yourself and your employees of the commonsense rules of email communication and social media etiquette.
- Communicate online with the same level of respect you would display if you were talking face-to-face with the subject of your commentary.
- Executives should articulate a personal strategy and establish boundaries before jumping onto social media platforms.
- The speed of digital communication is central to its appeal, but consider having a person whose judgment you trust review every post before distribution.
- Establishing yourself as “your own brand” requires the same care and consistency devoted to the branding of successful products and services. Being seen and liked is not an adequate long-term brand strategy.
- Most important of all, before you hit “send,” consider how comfortable you would be if your thoughts were projected on a big-screen TV in court, reviewed by a headhunter, or quoted in a story on the front page of The New York Times.
Whether you believe the new State Department screening protocol is fair or not, take note of its crisis-prevention lessons. The desire to be liked or considered clever is powerful enough to put your future at risk.
Beware the siren call of social media.
Crisis Quotient Blog 