By Jordan McDonald
We all know about a “spring clean” – when you get to a point that you clean something around the house that has been sitting there for a while.
But what about a spring clean of social media?
It’s worth doing once a year for anyone regardless of how often you’re posting on socials.
There are plenty of people who wish they had cleaned out their socials.
One of those is English cricketer Ollie Robinson. As Ollie was making his Test debut at Lord’s last month, out came a bunch of Twitter posts that he had made eight years earlier.
Some of the tweets were racist and sexist.
Ollie was suspended for eight matches and fined after expressing his remorse and claiming that he had no idea the posts could be found.
Ollie isn’t the only one regretting his social past.
President Donald Trump has also made headlines because of tweets he made prior to his presidency.
Kevin Hart is another whose ‘homophobic’ tweets saw him shoved out of hosting the 2019 Oscars.
Let’s change focus to your own social media account. I’ll bet you can’t remember the majority of what you posted five years ago, even less 10 years ago (provided you’ve had social media that long).
If someone asked you if they’d find anything inappropriate on your social media if they went back and searched, are you entirely confident you could say no? And to follow up, do you know what your privacy settings allow people to see?
If you’re sitting here now worried about what you might’ve posted over the years and want to do a clean-up, here’s what to do:
Facebook has a great bulk delete tool that really saves you a lot of time if you want to delete a lot of posts. Go to your profile on the Facebook app on your iPhone or Android and click the three dots (…) under your name, then click ‘Activity Log’. In there you will find everything you’ve posted, commented, likes, groups, events - everything you’ve engaged with. You will be able to select each item as you scroll and delete them all once you’re happy with your selection.
Once you’ve done that, hop over to ‘Settings’ and into ‘Privacy’ and review if your profiles currently level of privacy is still suitable. There are plenty of modifications you can make to your privacy so it’s perfectly suited to you.
Twitter doesn’t offer a bulk delete tool like Facebook yet. To delete tweets you need to go back and find them first, then delete them individually.
Visit ‘Settings’ to see if they need updating. Twitter doesn’t provide you a lot of flexibility when it comes to your privacy - you’re either very private or public with a few privacy controls about who can see your tweets.
There is no bulk delete tool for Instagram either. You will need to delete each post one by one. This is actually a worthwhile practice and you might stumble across something you otherwise would’ve missed.
If you don’t want your profile to be publicly viewable, switch it to private in “Settings”. This has always been a feature of Instagram and it will only show your posts to your followers. This assumes you trust everyone who you allow to follow you.
If you like a particular post but fear some others won’t, you can “Archive” the post by clicking the three dots (…) on that post. It will store it so you can see it but it will be removed from your profile so others cannot.
If you want to post content that you don’t want living on your profile forever, share it via you Story. It will last 24hrs and then be deleted.
Next time you think about a spring clean, remember to do the same to your socials.