Oct. 6 marks a day that will live with our generation in every contested law constitutional crisis for the next several decades. Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the ninth Supreme Court Justice after a torrent of hearings and allegations of sexual misconduct that concluded with an FBI investigation.

All of the setbacks in the confirmation dated back to Kavanaugh’s years in high school and college. According to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the sexual assault performed under Kavanaugh was when he was 17 and she was 15.

Ford came forward after finding out that her alleged former attempted rapist was nominated by Trump for the Supreme Court. Confirmation hearings turned into inquisitions, and soon enough, the senate panel was digging through Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook and personal calendar.

This treatment, whether you agree with its reasoning or not, was invasive. Kavanaugh had his whole high school social life exposed to a panel of senators and the entire nation through public broadcast. He liked beer. Sometimes he drank too many beers. He and his friends referred to flatulence as ‘boofing.’

If I were forced to speak about my personal life in high school at the age of fifty, I’d be equally as defensive and uncomfortable as he was. I never in my life want to sit in front of a crowd of the most powerful women and men in the country and explain what my Saturday nights were comprised of back then.

Kavanaugh’s hearings are a scary reminder of the importance of your decisions at a young age. 36 years of silence couldn’t erase the damage of his supposed childhood actions. The spectre of his past came back to haunt him when it counted the most.

These things don’t just disappear. Whether you’re applying for a job at the corner gas station or running for the highest position in the land, your past actions will be held against you.

The one advantage that Kavanaugh held in the hearings was the lack of evidence. The board could expose his high school social life all they wanted, but, for better or worse, there was no evidence proving that he committed any of the crimes Ford and other women accused him of. It was testimony versus testimony.

This generation doesn’t have the luxury to hide behind a charade of counterclaims. The advent of social media and smartphones has ruined the opportunity for us to leave the past in the past. Within a matter of a few clicks, your twitter beef that got out of control your freshman year is out there for everyone to see.

Unfortunately, everything we do now is public. Snapchat Memories serves as a database for potentially incriminating actions to be brought up 36 years from now and your ‘personal’ life is catalogued on your Instagram. In three decades when you’re running for office, there’s not going to be an opportunity to waffle around video evidence of a high school allegation. Your actions will perpetually follow you.