MHS students will have to take a government class sometime during high school. During government, you learn about the infamous Bill of Rights. Not to bore you with a history lesson, but the Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments of the US Constitution, and the First Amendment is the protection of your freedom of speech. Despite this, when creating the Constitution, the founding fathers did not account for petty drama between two teenagers in the Instagram DMs.

Today, speech isn’t just spoken into existence; it lives in text bubbles, direct messages, and private stories. Although on Snapchat, you can see when someone has screenshotted something, they have every right to do so. That screenshot can be copied, saved, forwarded, and reposted in seconds. 

In a high-tech world where nearly every conversation takes place through a screen, privacy no longer feels permanent. A text message you send your best friend and confidence or a vulnerable confession typed in a moment of trust might not stay private, simply because of a screenshot.

We label things private stories, close friends, or direct messages, but just because they say they are private does not mean that they cannot be public in an instant. A screenshot of a text that you send to your best friend may capture the word said, but not the tone, emotion, or your intention behind it. 

Not all screenshots are a bad thing sometimes; they can help someone. In those cases, the screenshots protect people.  They hold accountability that word of mouth cannot. Even so, screenshots are often taken for some sort of entertainment or to show Friends and to get them to take your side to win an argument. If you’re on the opposite end of the screenshot, it’s not a great feeling. It seems as if you can’t trust anyone and that your private moment was made public to hurt you. 

In a study by University of Michigan researcher Alexis Shore Ingber, the screenshot feature on digital messaging platforms creates serious privacy problems. In the study, she states, “While the screenshot feature can be leveraged for benign purposes, such as to recall information at a later date, it has also been cited as a weapon for public shaming that is emotionally and physically destructive.”

While they have revealed bullying, manipulation, harassment, and hypocrisy, they have also fueled drama, amplified misunderstandings, and turned private messages into a public spectacle.  We have grown up in a generation where conversations leave a permanent trail. Unlike past generations, Gen Z’s teenage years are probably posted on Musically or Instagramor archived. Just because we think we have deleted something doesn’t mean it’s truly gone; it is still out there somewhere.

The idea that everything could be saved changes how we interact. It makes honest mistakes feel like a permanent mark on yourself.  It makes growing into a better person harder when the old version of yourself can resurface instantly.

So what can we do? Well, there’s no simple solution, and technology will not go away. Screenshots also will not disappear, but maybe the conversation needs to shift. Normalize asking before you share something; it’s not fair to the other person if they randomly see their texts to you on your Snapchat story. Just because something was said in the DMs does not mean that it needs to leave the DMs. 

We need to remember that behind every screen and screenshot that you may want to take, there’s a real person. Someone who likely trusted that what they said would stay between the two of you. Sometimes winning an argument does not mean getting people on your side, but it means being the bigger person, and sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to choose not to share.