There is something depressingly inevitable about the exposure of Britain’s first youth police commissioner as just another silly little girl who tweets before she thinks.

Sobbing her way through an apology for the “inappropriate language and views” she posted on on her Twitter account, Paris Brown looked more like a shame-faced child than a youth ambassador on a publicly-funded £15,000 salary.

How bitterly she must regret that reckless tweeting, aged 14 to 16, which returned to haunt her in national newspaper headlines just days after her appointment.

While her racist, homophobic comments, and references to boozing, sex and drugs, leave a nasty taste, I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Paris.

Public humiliation is a lot for anyone to take, and it must be particularly distressing for a 17-year-old girl thrust into the media lion pit. Watching the tears roll down her cheeks as she faced the flashbulbs felt like being at a public execution with a ball of knitting, but after my initial tutting and head-shaking I found myself fearing for her state of mind. I can’t imagine how I’d have coped with that level of shame and media attention at her age.

But when I was her age there was no social media, and thank goodness for that. My immature opinions and angst-ridden ramblings were scribbled in a diary, kept under my bed. The worst thing that could happen was that my mum would find it, not that it would be posted all over the internet for the world to read.

Privacy, it seems, is a thing of the past. Today’s teenagers think nothing of laying their lives bare online and, like Paris, many will discover that growing up on the internet can be a painful process. As she said in her statement, “I can’t imagine I’m the only teenager” to have “showed off and wildly exagerrated” on Twitter.

She is, however, the only teenager to be appointed the country’s first youth PCC, and maybe she should have come clean about her Twitter past when she landed the job. And maybe whoever picked her, out of 164 applicants, for the role of liaising between Kent Police and young people should have checked her social media history.

There’s a lesson to be learned here, not just in terms of recruitment for a top crime-connected job, but in giving away too much of yourself online.

Making inane comments on Facebook and Twitter comes naturally to teenagers. Paris has yet to prove herself as a responsible role model, but her tearful face could serve as a reminder to youngsters that their past can catch up with them as quickly as it takes to post a daft tweet.