Digital Regret: Why Deleting Your Embarrassing Posts Might Backfire

Every 7 seconds, someone deletes a social media post out of embarrassment. If you're Gen Z or millennial, the internet has been your digital diary since adolescence—capturing every fandom phase, friendship drama, and cringeworthy opinion you've ever shared.

But when you stumble across that mortifying post from 2015, is hitting delete really your best option?

The Deletion Trap: Nothing Really Disappears

Alexandra Samuel, a Wall Street Journal contributor and digital strategist, has a counterintuitive take: "Think about deleting things you've posted as curation, not erasure."

Her perspective was shaped by a pivotal moment in 2011 during the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots. For the first time, social media captured civil unrest in real-time, with citizens eagerly sharing photos and videos to identify rioters. While others celebrated this "crowd-sourced justice," Samuel saw danger.

"History teaches us that when we start narcing on our fellow citizens and stepping into that quasi-surveillance role, it tends to go very, very badly," she wrote that evening for Harvard Business Review. The backlash was swift, but it crystallized her understanding of how online shame operates.

Here's the catch: The Internet Archive keeps snapshots of everything. When you delete something, "it might be deleted for you," Samuel explains, "but that doesn't mean it's deleted from the internet."

The Case Against Scorched Earth

Consider this scenario: You posted something tone-deaf on Instagram, realized your mistake, and engaged thoughtfully with commenters who called you out. If you delete the entire thread without backing it up, you lose evidence of your growth.

"If it comes back to haunt you, you don't have that evidence of learning," Samuel notes. "It's much better to take screenshots, archive the thread, and back up all that context."

This approach challenges our instinct for digital perfectionism. In a culture where one wrong tweet can derail careers, the impulse is to maintain a spotless online record. But Samuel argues this creates "a completely meaningless and stupid social media presence."

The Hot Take Economy

Why do we post things we later regret? Samuel points to the addictive nature of online outrage: "There's something really delightful about outrage as a subjective experience. We live in a complicated world with lots of gray areas. These moments of shaming people online give us a little moment of moral superiority."

The solution isn't avoiding all controversy—it's resisting "the lure of the hot take." When you're deliberately pushing buttons, "that's when you end up saying things that don't reflect what you truly believe."

For content creators and professionals building personal brands, this creates a delicate balance. Authentic engagement requires some risk-taking, but calculated controversy for clicks often backfires spectacularly.

Surviving Digital Shame

When online regret hits, Samuel's advice is surprisingly simple: Step away from the screen.

"Close the computer, put the phone down, walk away. Talk to somebody with good judgment." Unless you're a celebrity facing 100,000 responses per hour, "there's no reason three crappy comments can't wait to be addressed the next day."

The key insight? Admitting you're wrong won't kill you. "One of the most powerful things we can do as humans, professionals, and internet users is show that you can be wrong—even wrong on the internet—and it doesn't destroy your value."

This perspective feels radical in our current digital climate, where public figures regularly lose opportunities over past statements. But Samuel's approach suggests a different path: embracing fallibility as fundamentally human.

The Archive of Becoming

Samuel compares social media to old journals: "Every time I reread them, I think, 'What old me thought is none of my business.'" But unlike private journals, our digital evolution happens in public.

This creates unique challenges for digital natives whose entire adolescence is preserved online. Unlike previous generations who could reinvent themselves by moving to new cities, today's young adults carry their digital history everywhere.

Yet this permanent record isn't necessarily a burden—it could be proof of growth. Samuel advocates for "tenderness and empathy" when viewing both our own and others' digital histories, focusing "on what people learn and how we grow rather than judging everyone by their most awful moment."