When dealing with a personal injury like a car accident or a slip and fall case, it's normal to want to reach out for family and friends for support. Instead of doing this through social media, it may be best to go cold turkey in the social media world and completely cut yourself off until your settlement case is complete. When working with a personal injury attorney, it's important to build as much evidence as possible without creating any negative evidence against yourself and the case. The following four reasons to go cold turkey on social media can help your odds with the case and truly limit a lot of defensive arguments.

Video & Image Posts

Some of the biggest pieces of evidence against your case are video and image posts. Defensive lawyers in your case will often use these posts to try and prove that the extent of your injuries are not as severe as you stated. Even if you've healed through some of the injuries, it's easy to point to this evidence and showcase that you have not been as injured as you claim. For example, if you injured your arm in a car accident, a simple picture of you holding a child up can be used as negative evidence. Video footage may show you moving, dancing, or completing tasks that look bad when compared to the injuries you've suffered. Even if you're still in pain, cutting off these media posts can help against any negative backlash that has occurred as a result.

Emotional Pain and Suffering

A big part of many personal injury cases is the pain and suffering. This is typically a typed statement that showcases your physical and emotional damages as a result of the injury. Even with your full mental pain and suffering statements, social media posts can be used to refute them. Simple posts featuring humorous images or statements about being joyful and happy could be potentially used against you during a settlement case. As you heal through the injuries, it's important to communicate with family and friends through text messaging or phone calls instead of publishing all of the information on the internet.

Private Accounts

It's important to be aware of your social media accounts and how "private" they actually are. Even if you set a post to private, friends, third-party apps, and followers of your account can have access. You never know what people can share these posts, give them to a defensive team, and use them against you in a case. Instead of taking any chances, you should keep your posting to a minimum or cut it off completely. Leaving a digital trail about your personal injury could have a lot of negative impacts on the final outcome of the case.

Screenshots

Even temporary social media accounts like Snapchat may make you feel safe because the posts can disappear and are not tracked like traditional social media. Even in this case, your posts can be used against you if someone takes a screenshot of them and saves it to the phone. These screenshots can showcase the date and time that the posts were published, adding even more evidence in your case. Even if no one takes a screenshot, in some cases the data is never actually deleted, even though it appears so on your personal feed. If the case moves far enough, a subpoena may be used to try and retrieve these pictures and videos in a case against you. When working with an attorney, it's important to list all of the social media accounts you use and your most recent posts. A lawyer can give you advice for the proper steps to take to help protect your case.

It may seem hard at first, but cutting yourself off from social media can have multiple benefits for your case and your daily life. You can free up time to do extra things and fully heal from your injuries.

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