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These days it seems that everyone lives on their social media accounts. From pictures of lunch to news about vacation plans, we all like to share our day-to-day activities with our friends and family. When it comes to filing a personal injury claim, however, that love of sharing can come back to bite us. Insurance companies do whatever they can to avoid paying proper compensation to injured claimants, as that hurts their bottom line. Tactics to avoid proper compensation can be as low as stalking your social media posts to find any shred of evidence that you may not be as hurt as you claim to be.
Claiming You Are Not Injured
If you’re an exercise nut, you may enjoy posting selfies after a jog or when trying on the newest athletic gear. These sorts of posts may seem innocent to you. After all, it’s your life, and you want to share your healthy habits. What’s the problem with that?
Well, those posts can become an issue if the insurance company you filed your claim against gets a hold of them. One insurance company strategy is to use your posts to discredit you. For example, they may use the fact that you went for a jog as evidence that any serious injuries you included in your claim were exaggerated, or just to cast you in a bad light. The picture of you on a jog or at the gym could cost you thousands in compensation.
Admissions of Fault
Another kind of post that the insurance company may be looking for is anything they can twist into an admission of guilt. That may be something like you writing about how you never saw the at-fault driver, or that your old and often malfunctioning car finally bit the dust. It may even be from a post where you lament the guilt you feel over the fear and trauma your loved ones faced as a result of your injuries. Anything that could possibly be made into you admitting any minor fault, no matter how innocent a post, will be used against you during your case and can affect how much your case is worth.
Downplaying Emotional Trauma
We all try to make our lives seem a little better on social media. It isn’t common to only post the good and leave out the bad. While you may be suffering from extreme emotional trauma, even PTSD, your social media will likely not reflect that. Instead, you might choose to post pictures of yourself spending time with friends or family, enjoying a vacation, and eating delicious food. While these posts should be fine and say nothing about your true mental state, an insurance company will likely try to claim you are not suffering emotional trauma after your accident, which can make obtaining recovery for non-economic damages an uphill battle.
What You Can Do
While setting your social media to private may seem like a clear solution, the truth is that it will only help a little. A private account, whether it be on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Snapchat, can help keep the general public from seeing what your posts. But anyone already following you can see and screenshot your posts, making them easily viewable to others. The best thing you can do for your personal injury claim is to stop posting to your social media altogether. A simple post explaining why you need to go on radio silence for a period of time can help keep your loved ones informed if you are worried that people will take your lack of posting poorly.
After stepping away from your social media accounts, you should also contact an experienced Santa Barbara personal injury attorney. At NordstrandBlack PC, our attorneys can help you fight against the insurance company’s outlandish claims in order to get you the compensation you need and deserve. If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident that was not your fault, call NordstrandBlack PC at (805) 962-2022 to receive advice from experienced Santa Barbara attorneys.