My Digital Footprint

I teach people to think about, discover, care about and reduce their environmental footprint, but today we learned about your digital footprint. It is basically saying that what ever you put on the internet will pretty much always be there and this can eventually come back to haunt you. What's even worse is someone else can even put up something about you, such as a not so flattering photo and this can sometimes be viewed by people you don't want viewing it such as college recruiters or potential employers. This is a concern I have with Facebook as many friends will take photos that are absolutely fine within that group setting, but not so fine when published/tagged and shared with the world.

According to Canadian Marketing Blog, adults can be classified into 4 groups:
1. Concerned & Careful (21% of online adults)
2. Worried by the Wayside (18%)
3. Confident Creatives (17%)
4. Unfazed and inactive (43%)


Kim Komando, wrote in the article 'Your online reputation can hurt you' people should assess their online footprint, then remove the negative and promote the positive. So immediately I typed my name in Google and then did it again with my name in "quotation marks". There were a few people with the same name including a female toddler who I don't think anyone will confuse me with. More articles about me popped up than I expected, however, to my pleasant surprise they were all good. I found an old website I created back in university and also a newspaper article written about me in the Bangkok Post. However, these were all positive things.

The key is not to be afraid of what is on the net but to manage it and make sure anyone trying to view information on you will find a lot of things, but all positive things. I should be highlighting my 2 blogs, my wiki, the newspaper write ups.

As I become more aware of this issue, I hope I can help my students think about their digital footprint. Again they should not fear this, but just be smart and responsible about their actions. Don't upload videos or photos that could be seen in a negative way. Don't write nasty and tasteless comments. Finally, do not join up with social groups you do not actually believe it. Students might find it funny to join up with a 'hate' group, but not realize that later in life someone might ask them about this. In a related topic, the interent can unfortunately be used in negative ways such as cyber bullying. Students also need to be educated about this topic.