• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, July 9, 2025

A lot has been said about how the youth of today shape the future. I don’t think quite enough is written about how we are shaping our youth through the way we have established media in today’s world. 

Kids these days fully understand that their digital footprint shapes their personal narrative, and that narrative is permanent.  When we were young, our guidance counselors threatened us with that ever-present story about things following us on our “permanent record.” Now kids truly have a permanent record, and it scares them. When they consider that digital footprint, they are less likely to take chances.  They become fearful that every move they make is recorded and broadcast for others to see.  On the flip side, they overshare on social media with very little regard for what potential employers will see during background checks.

The media inundates these children with exaggerated stories and diversely established politics, and everything is presented as truth.  Just ask any of your teenagers the benefits of beef tallow, and you will hear an endless barrage of how incredible it is -- but ask a dermatologist or doctor and you will have all those myths debunked in seconds.  TikTok is a news source as trusted as the evening news on any of the major networks, even though it's tainted with a point of view and the attempt to always sell something to someone somewhere.

How do you shape the future in a positive light when the present is creating a sense of mistrust and fear?  How can you inspire and create confidence in youth when the media is always sowing seeds of doubt?

For the record, I don’t have an answer.  I don’t even have a guess.

It’s our responsibility to help the youth of today better understand how to navigate the media so they can become confident, well-informed, positive members of society.  Maybe that means teaching them critical thinking.  Maybe it just means we need to raise the bar and make  the stories we tell in marketing more insightful and full of integrity.  Maybe we need to wean our kids off media -- or at least give them other options for learning and forming their own opinions. 

These kids need to have the chance to make mistakes without those mistakes following them around for the rest of their lives.  I doubt strongly that any of you reading this article would be happy if every mistake you ever made was being recorded and shared for all time.  You wouldn’t want that, so why do we have to live in a world where it is the norm for our kids?  We focus so often on data privacy, but what about a statute of limitations for data access, especially when it comes to minors and young people?  Can’t we make their data disappear after a certain period of time, enabling them to reinvent themselves as they get older and fully become who they were meant to be, rather than being stuck as who they were at their worst?

Maybe Meta Snap and the other social channels can sort this one out, creating a period by which all the old data and posts are scrubbed, allowing kids to have a fresh start and ensuring that not every mistake follows them forever.

That would be a step in the right direction.