Both the Western Advocate and Chifley local area command posted the breaking news on their Facebook pages and these posts were quickly shared far and wide.

That’s the great advantage of living in a social media age – news can be distributed more quickly and more widely than ever before.

Yesterday it was a case of people wanting to know the latest turn in what has been a tragic case from day one, but in other circumstances – particularly fire and flood – the ability to quickly disseminate information could be even more crucial.

The flipside, though, is that social media allows people to share opinions where they may not be wanted, and may not be appropriate.

Soon after yesterday’s post was published, readers began posting a range of views.

Some simply wanted to send a “rest in peace” to the three-year-old who tragically died in Oberon last month, while others wanted to pass comment on the case, as they saw it.

With the matter now before the courts, such comments are completely inappropriate and were deleted by the Western Advocate as quickly as they were posted.

Some were inadvertently inappropriate given the circumstances, some were deliberately inflammatory.

And that’s the greatest potential problem with social media: it allows people with no background in publishing – and no knowledge of media laws – to have their two cents’ worth on any issue that takes their fancy.

And the self-censorship that people generally apply to their day-to-day conversations is too often removed when they post online.

Social media is still a relatively new phenomenon and many among us are still determining how to make the most of it.

It’s great to be able to have our say on issues that concern us. But sometimes it’s simply better not to.