Everybody loves Twitter. It is the center of the universe for laughter and pure entertainment.

One of the best aspects of Twitter is that it provides users three simple ways to express their attitude towards a post: retweeting, quoting a tweet, or liking a tweet. Anything you like or disagree with is something you are going to react to. However, into this simple formula comes a small snag. Imagine this scenario: One day you are scrolling down your feed and you see a tweet that you can completely relate to or that makes you laugh till you cry. You do one of the three simple things, right? Well, what if the tweet has one or two explicit words or may be offensive – what do you do then? Do you retweet it or leave it alone?

I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard the watch what you post speech, but what if the post is the gospel truth and you want everybody else to know it?

Many people, including myself, have a public twitter page, which means that everybody can see what you tweet, like, retweet and/or pin to the top of your profile. That means college administration, big corporations, local businesses, celebrities, and people who have big dollars can see what you post and what you like – not to mention your parents, grandparents, and others close to you who may not like or agree with all that you do.

What this means is that when you are active on Twitter you are in a way, allowing who you are to show. This is why people, most often parents, warn us to watch what we post, like or retweet. If you are like me, in your mind you make it a point to be mindful about what you post on the internet, but every once in a while, we all slip up, some more than others.

When hashtags like “#TweetLikeThe1600s” or “#ThingsBlackParentsSay” begin to trend on Twitter, of course people who can relate may want to partake in the Twitter hashtag action: but some of the action, to those who can’t relate, may seem offensive to them. Even though what’s being spoken about may be true to some people, to others it may be offensive. This means we have to be careful about what we retweet.

Colleges and even employers look up who you are on the internet and, depending on how active you are, you could be pretty easy to find. Would you want your future supervisor, your dream college’s admissions director, or maybe even your parents searching your username into a search engine? Would you want them finding pictures of you holding red solo cups, or reading tweets on your page that may not directly reflect who you are that you retweeted it anyway because you thought it was funny?

Just think about it-losing an acceptance letter just because of one picture or one tweet. That could bring one of the most gut-wrenching feelings ever. People don’t realize that social media can literally destroy somebody’s life if not used properly. One leak of something inappropriate that can easily be traced back to you is crucial to the next steps in your life.

I’m not saying that you need to analyze every tweet you come upon and dissect the living heck out of it, because social media is supposed to be fun; however, I am saying be careful because you don’t want to be the kid that gets rejected for one bad tweet.