When I was in seventh grade, my parents gave me my first phone. Before they’d even let me hold it, they sat me down to teach me a very important lesson about the instantaneousness and the permanence of the internet.

They told me, “Once you post something, it’ll be there forever — nothing is ever really gone.” 

We’ve all heard the same caution. I never took the concept seriously until I made the mistake of sharing something that I couldn’t take back. This is the story of how I learned about the dangers of the internet the hard way.

As a teenager who grew up using technology as one of my primary methods of communication, I never took the warnings seriously. All of the apps my parents warned me about just worked the way I wanted them to, and they all felt in my control. I would see Snapchats disappear right after opening them and private stories vanish after 24 hours. Everything seemed to disappear when, each day, there was so much more that was new to see — so I had no reason to believe their warning. But when it truly mattered, all these features about online life seemed to disappear.

Without thinking one day, I jokingly recorded a friend and shared the post with a few friends, simply finding it funny. The content was embarassing, though, and without realizing it at the time, I shared something that would impact my friend in a huge, permanent way. I wasn’t the victim, but I had made one out of someone I cared about.

When I realized my mistake, I immediately tried to retrace my steps, thinking back to who received the video from me. I frantically asked them to delete it and figure out who else could have seen the clip in hopes of erasing the video from everyone’s phones entirely. It was too late: at that point, the video was out of my hands and out of my control.

It felt like something out of a movie — a scene with one mass text sent to the entire school — where suddenly everyone was whispering about one message. I didn’t believe that something like this could happen until I caused it myself.

In the days following, guilt consumed me. The impact of my actions was so much greater than I could have imagined. As I tried to process the harm I’d caused, I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation with my parents so long ago.

It took the process of seeing something go from in my hands and in my control to out of my hands and controlled by others for me to accept even this basic lesson that so many of us so often ignore. There was nothing I could do but regret my actions and apologize.

I was shocked to see how fast things could spread thanks to the development of technology. We take that feature of social media for granted; it can spread joy in an instant as much as it can ruin a reputation, deserved or not. 

Though I can’t undo my mistake and I can’t untap that send button, I finally took the lessons about the dangers of the internet seriously. Once something leaves your phone, you lose control over it. Once you send it, you can’t take it back — which is why I now think far more carefully before sending anything. One text, one snap, one post has the potential to change a life, whether it’s yours or another’s, and it’ll always be worth an extra second of thought.