Digital Footprint Assignment

How might your digital footprint affect your future opportunities? Give at least two examples.

Your digital footprint could either positively or negatively impact your future opportunities. If you are looking for a job, your future employer will most likely do a quick background check by looking up your name on the internet. They may choose not to hire you from finding inappropriate posts on social media, immature and disrespectful comments, or any evidence that leads them to believe you are not a good candidate for the job.

It is important to understand that everything you post, comment, like, share, or retweet stays on the internet forever. A racist tweet that you tweeted 7 years ago can be found and traced back to you. You may argue that you’ve changed from the past and the person you were 7 years ago doesn’t amount to the person you are now, but what you did in the past is still attached to your name and will be for the rest of your life. Your digital footprint is always following you and that is why it is very important to be careful of what you say and do on the internet.

There is also another side to this and that is if your future employer finds positive and respectful information connected to you on the internet, they may be more inclined to consider you as a candidate for the job. Your university or college will also review your online presence. It would be sad if you met all the aspects your dream university was looking for, but to be rejected because of something immature you commented online.

Describe at least three strategies that you can use to keep your digital footprint appropriate and safe.

A way to keep your digital footprint appropriate and safe is to always think before you share. Before doing something online that could negatively impact you in the future, you should think about if what you’re going is how you want others to see you as. You want your digital footprint to positively reflect who you are as a person.

Another strategy is using privacy settings. Setting your social media accounts to private can be safer because you can view your followers, and control who sees your profile and your posts. Whether you have your privacy settings on, or your accounts are public, it is important to think about your digital footprint.

My last tip is don’t overshare. The only way to make sure to avoid negative effects from your digital footprint is don’t share things that you don’t want the whole world to know. Sadly, anything you’ve done online could be used against you and your past decisions do impact your future.

If you could go back in time, is there anything you would do differently online? Think of what type of advice you would pass on to your younger self or other students. How could you go about explaining it to them?

If I could go back in time, there isn’t anything I can think of that I would do differently. I think that what I put out online positively reflects who I am as a person and my digital footprint is safe and appropriate.

Advice I would pass on to other students is always think before you share, don’t post personal information, and use privacy settings online. To explain it and to get them to understand it, I would provide real-world examples and show that everything you put out online is traced back to you. Anything you post, like, share, or comment stays on the internet forever and that is why it’s important to take care of your digital footprint.

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