Creating a Positive Digital Footprint
Personal/Social Competency Reflection
I know that my digital footprint can have both positive and negative consequences. Some examples of positive consequences are making and strengthening relationships with others or building a positive image of myself for prospective employers or educators. Some negative consequences include unintentional harm to my reputation based on actions from the past, or negative judgement from others who don’t truly know me in person. In order to avoid these negative consequences, I don’t post anything that is too personal to me, and I try to keep my posts relatively neutral so that I don’t attract unwanted attention or judgement from the wrong places!
Some of my preferred strategies for maintaining a healthy, balanced online presence include choosing a generic profile picture that doesn’t show my face, only using parts of my name in usernames so that I keep my full name private, and limiting my amount of time on apps that I use most frequently so that I keep a healthy balance of screen time and real life!
My values around what interests me, what I consider ethical and what I believe in inform my decisions about liking posts that are shared by others. I choose to leave a like on posts that I find funny, worthy causes that I support, posts about books or movies that I enjoy, and posts made by friends and family. I try to make sure that the posts I like are respectful, and as a result I choose to ignore posts made by some friends that can be offensive or insulting. My main goal online is to keep my profile as positive as possible.