When is the Correct Time to Tweet?

A mother in Florida sparked a passionate debate earlier this month, when she decided to tweet about her son’s death, less than an hour after she found that he had drowned in the family’s swimming pool. Shellie Ross was at home with her two young sons and was doing some gardening in the backyard. She reportedly lost sight of her two year old son for a few minutes, during which time the toddler fell into the pool and drowned. Paramedics arrived to the scene at 5:38pm, and Ross was already back on Twitter tweeting to her followers about the accident at 6:14pm. Ross asked her Twitter followers to “pray like never before.” But it was too late—the toddler was pronounced dead and only two hours later, Ross was back on Twitter in order to inform her followers that she was “remembering her million dollar baby.”

The backlash directed at the grieving mother’s tweets was swift and brutal, even from people she assumed were her most supportive followers. Some questioned whether a little less time on Twitter and more time supervising a two year old toddler would have prevented the tragedy. Others wondered whether it was even appropriate to post such a tragedy on a social networking tool with such a trivial, innocuous name such as “Twitter,” and if tweets should not instead be reserved for more mundane, cheerful or non-serious status updates.

But Dan Liechty of Illinois State University’s Social Work Department argued that Ross did nothing wrong by reaching out to her followers on Twitter. While a decade ago it would have been a natural reaction to reach for the telephone after a tragedy in order to seek comfort from friends and loved ones, in the 21^st century, online communities increasingly serve to provide this type of support. But this incident shows where the boundaries of friendships formed through social networking sites really are and society’s preconceived notions of what is and is not appropriate to publish on Twitter.