Michelle Obama might have been giving advice to the hundreds of teenagers who were part of Thursday afternoon's sold-out Vancouver visit, but you had to hope that one person back at home in Washington was listening, too.
Think before you tweet.
“No one’s first thoughts are worth tweeting,” the former First Lady said at the first of two Greater Vancouver Board of Trade events at Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
“I post by committee,” she said, humorously describing an eight-person group of people who will go over what she wants to say, thinks about it over night and then shows it to two more people the next day before hitting send.
“That’s how I post,” she said, with a smile that reached each person right up to the balcony’s rafters. “It’s not, ‘This is how I’m feeling; I’m going to post now.’”
She said to think about standing in front of a huge mirror and wondering how your words will reflect back on you. “Tweet goodness.”
The afternoon’s moderator was Bridgitte Anderson, the general manager of Edelman Vancouver and chair of the GVBOT’s Women’s Leadership Circle advisory committee. Anderson asked Obama how she coped in this social media age, both as a woman who has been the target of negativity and as a mother who wants to protect her daughters.
“I would never expose myself to someone’s random opinion of me,” Obama said, adding that she never reads the comments under her posts. So one piece of advice is, “don’t expose yourself to a lot of that negative emotional energy.”
There’s an “emotional hazard” of not only exposing yourself to others’ comments and judgements, but also judging yourself by their comments. “Whether you think you can handle it or not, it does affect you.”
As to how she teaches her daughters safe social media practices, she shook her head. "It's hard. [There's] a lot of me talking and a lot of them not listening and having something bad happen and me saying, 'I told you so.'"
She often turned to her young staff to deliver the message to her daughters who, like most young people, can be more influenced by what their peers say rather than their parents.
Trying not to sound like the “grandmother on the couch” who doesn’t understand the modern world, Obama tells young people to be aware of the hazards of social media. Don’t let everyone enter into your life by sharing it all on social media. Also, “if you have 1,000 people following you, that should scare you,” she said. No one has 1,000 friends.
“Be cautious and don’t tweet everything," she said.
She also encouraged people to look up from their cellphones or computer screens to connect with one another.
Staring at cellphones rather than being in the moment wasn't an issue during her afternoon talk — all cellphones had to be turned off during her presentation. Although the GVBOT had originally planned an evening presentation only, the event sold out so quickly that Obama agreed to speak in the afternoon, with a focus on youth. Vancity sponsored 350 students from across the Lower Mainland to attend the event for free.
