Donte DiVincenzo led the Villanova Wildcats to a national championship in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on Monday night and was named the Most Outstanding Player. But that’s not the big story about him right now. His social media activity as a high schooler is what’s getting all the attention. Some of the tweets from his account used the n-word when quoting song lyrics, others used a derogatory term to describe people who are gay.
As the confetti settled Monday night, the media was talking more about offensive tweets he sent a few years ago as a high schooler than his offense on the court Monday night.
You can read about it on ESPN here. No doubt DiVincenzo would have rather discussed his 31 points and the euphoria he felt of not only winning but of dominating the game. Instead, people wanted to discuss his activity on Twitter a few years ago. He said he didn’t remember using those terms, and he deleted his Twitter account.
This story is a great example to use with your kids. It is illustrates that what they post on social media really can live forever. Your age when you posted doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter if you remember doing it. What you post on social media can still come back to haunt you, often when you least expect it.
Those tweets may be deleted now, but they aren’t gone. I just googled “Donte DiVincenzo” and the first several stories that came up were all about his high school tweets, not his outstanding college basketball performance.
Remind your kids to be careful with what they post. Make sure they know that whatever they say online can last forever. Encourage them to really, truly think about what they are posting.
This illustrates that they really should not post anything that they don’t want to see as the headline of a news story. Because it could just happen.
Prior Post: Ways that being on Jeopardy! is similar to talking with kids about alcohol
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