One minute you’re a nurse, the next you’re a national headline.
This is another example of why I am personally fascinated with human behavior, especially in the digital age. Why would someone who had to have worked very hard to attain a nursing license choose to risk it all by doing something so dumb, humiliating, thoughtless, immature, gross, etc.?
One would think that by the age of twenty-six (her age at the time of this incident) a person with any shred of intelligence would comprehend that taking pictures of an unconscious person’s anything is unacceptable behavior.
Stories like this reinforce to me that it is more important than ever to educate children early about what constitutes appropriate cell phone and online behavior. The taking, sharing, and/or possession of inappropriate photos is discussed in my “A Very Social Presentation” assemblies to elementary and middle school age students.
What we know:
Ms. Johnson decided (for whatever reason) it would be a good idea to photograph an unconscious patient’s private parts and share the pics via text message with others.
She is now being punished by our legal system. Her nursing license has been revoked and she will be on probation for three years.
In addition, her name Googled returns 700,000+ results, the headline visible seven pages deep along with her home address and photograph which will be effectively impossible to remove.
I talk to kids a lot about their own anonymity and what it means to them. I tell them that I predict that one day our anonymity will become a valuable commodity and that some brainiac, perhaps one of them, will invent software or an app that allows us to potentially remove any embarrassing mistakes or online over-exposure (no pun intended).
What this young woman chose to do is completely and totally unacceptable. She made a bad choice and a terrible mistake. Is it fair that it will now potentially follow her into infinity on the World Wide Web? Fair doesn’t matter on this playground. It is what it is.
Please don’t be afraid to talk with your kids about pictures and their phones. They need to understand that even possessing a partially clothed or nude photo of themselves – even if they never share it with anyone – is a crime. If someone sends them an inappropriate photo, unsolicited, they need to know they come to you for help with how to deal with it.
Thanks for stopping by.
xo Jen