THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN A PERSONAL INJURY CASE
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, social media tends to hurt a person’s personal injury case. By definition, social media is social and chatty; it’s “What did you do today?” and “Here’s what I did today” and “Here’s how I am feeling”, and “Here’s the activities I am doing” and “Here’s what I have done at work.” Such chatter can potentially expose the client to actual problems with the insurance company, by giving them the ability to misinterpret what’s going on in the client’s life.
For instance, if they are told to stay in bed, but they post the picture of themselves out riding a bike, that is going against medical advice and may also indicate the person is not that badly injured. It’s, “What is your day?” and “What have you been doing?”
More importantly, people are self-centered, so it’s more, “Here’s what I did today” and “Here’s who I did it with” and those are activities that can potentially indicate the person is not that badly injured. Therefore, it is best to keep activity on social media to a minimum if you have a personal injury case; of course, even if you are not chatting and posting about yourself, other people, like friends, family or work colleagues may be asking you questions, or they may be putting posts on Facebook or Twitter and putting you in a position to have to answer and your answer may be misinterpreted. It’s best to tell everybody, “Cool it! I’m not in the social media game now. I have a job to do, which is to take care of myself, to get well and then I’ll be back in the game.”