My Digital Footprint
Creating a Positive Digital Footprint
By: Tammy Korosec
I wrote this article, for my ‘positive digital footprint’ project. I created my design on the edublog itself since it would make the most sense for what I was doing. I didn’t use references since I have heard what i wrote before and also from personal experience, I did put the links for the pictures underneath the pictures themselves.
Knowing how to create and maintain a positive digital footprint is important, not just for the present time but for later in life too. Your digital footprint follows you throughout your life and can’t be deleted: well not easily at least, your posts and searches on the internet are there forever even if you take it down and/or delete the account.
People can take screenshots, pictures and save your posts usually without your knowledge. Oh, remember those ‘terms and conditions’ you ignored and accepted when creating an account for your favourite social app. Yeah those terms and conditions usually state something about using or storing your information to make your ‘social media experience better’ ; example: do you ever wonder why the adds you get seem so personal and targeted? Sometimes your apps keep the information on what you search and view on their app and recommend similar posts and searches from what you’ve looked at.
Thinking before you post is always a good thing. The poster, as shown above is a good mental checklist to use before you decide to post or share anything online.
Along with being careful with what you post you should also be careful when it comes to passwords and logins. Most people use the same password for multiple accounts; while this might be convenient it’s not too safe when it comes to cyber security. It’s best to have good, strong passwords so it’s harder for hackers or viruses to get though to your accounts and posting unwanted pictures or stealing data from more important accounts like your bank account.
Personal/social Competency Reflections
Some short/long term goals with my digital spaces include: keeping my digital footprint as small as I can and post as little as I can if possible, my plan to achieve them is, to think if I really have a need to post what I’m thinking of posting and to keep a lot to myself when it comes to my life; there’s really no need to post about my life since it could come back to me later in life.
Some of my preferred strategies for maintaining a healthy, balanced online presence are: using social media apps like Instagram/Snapchat appropriately and when sending things to people, whether it’s pictures or text; I keep in mind that it could be shared with others; even if what you send isn’t necessarily incriminating it’s still a good thing to keep in mind. Another way of maintaining a healthy, balanced online presence is, by keeping my presence relatively small, along with keeping my accounts private and using strong passwords.
Some of the ways I work to build and maintain online relationships are, by using social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat to contact friends. With Covid-19 most friends you can’t see in person especially if they go to another school since that’s really the most we see our friends now. So by using these apps to keep in contact with friends I can’t see face to face i can maintain my relationships with them even if it’s through a screen for now.