It is said that the things you post online can be very damaging to your ‘real-life’. And it is true. Because how else can job employers find out you go to the bar every Sunday and get wasted, other than on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. They can’t. It is important to keep negative things, words, and actions off of the internet for everyone to see, because if someone who doesn’t know you very well, finds you on the internet, and figures out all the bad things about you its not really going to leave a positive version of you in their mind.
On the first day when I searched myself, I was really surprised when I found nothing of my own, other than a YouTube playlist I deleted a long time ago. Obviously, nothing comes up when you click on the playlist, since the it’s deleted, there really isn’t anything on me on the web when you search my name. I tried my name in quotations, and I even tried searching my name with my city, but none of the pages had my info on them. I couldn’t even find my Instagram, which clearly states my name in the @. (Weirdly there were a lot of websites in foreign languages.) I checked the images as well, and there was nothing to be found.
If someone where to search my name, maybe a job employer, they would not be able to find any negative information linked to me, and I am determined to keep it that way. I think, since I have been educated on this topic before, that I am doing a really good job keeping my digital footprint positive, and even if my Instagram popped up, it wouldn’t matter because it’s private.
I think it’s important to have a positive digital footprint, because the things linked to you on the internet make a very strong impression on anyone that knows you. Universities, job, and maybe even friends, judge what you put on the internet, and having a positive footprint may even provide you with a life-changing opportunity some day.
From this project I learned that everything you do on the internet impacts your future. I now know that employers search most of their to-be employees and that the things they find make or break your chances of working for them. I also learned, that it is important to keep your accounts private and not to use your real name if you don’t have to, to clean up your footprint. I would share it I think it would be most impactful to my friends and classmates if a story was found, of a person losing an once in a lifetime opportunity because of something bad found linked to them, on the internet. It could be shared on Instagram, since stories like that spread fast.