1. How might your digital footprint affect your future opportunities? Give at least two examples.
Digital Footprint can affect your future by helping you get into college or university. If you have a positive digital footprint, you will potentially get a boost towards your application and show that you are responsible with your image. Your digital footprint can also negatively affect your future by showcasing to much information or something that may make a college or university that you may be applying for, decline an application. It may even affect something way in the future, like getting a job, or a room in a senior home, something that you may not be thinking about now.
2. Describe at least three strategies that you can use to keep your digital footprint appropriate and safe.
The first way you can keep your digital footprint is by only posting when you need to. Don’t post anything that is unnecessary or something you may regret. A strategy I sometimes use is, before I post a picture I have to be okay with my grandparents or my uncle or aunt seeing it. This strategy works for me because it helps me to really think about what I am doing before I post something. Another strategy you could use is to simply keep your account private. For example, my Instagram account is private, this makes it so that I can keep my information safe. Another useful tip is to keep your Bio brief. Don’t put any information in it that you wouldn’t want a stranger seeing. My last strategy is to not have your location on everything you post. It may be nice for other people to know where you are, but if that information gets into the wrong hands, it could be bad for you and whoever you were with at the time.
3. What information did you learn that you would pass on to other students? How would you go about telling them?
During this assignment I learned that your phone is always tracking you, which I found super creepy, especially when Mr. Barazzuol had us look in our settings and showed us that our phone knows exactly where and when we are anywhere. I also learned that Universities and work places can easily find your digital footprint and what they find can lead to you not getting into a College or University you want to get into. Almost everything I learned in this unit, I didn’t know three weeks ago. Something I would tell other students is that if you make one big mistake right now, whether it is posting something bad or inappropriate on the internet, it will negatively affect your future in a way that may mean you could loose a job or something very important to you because of what you did. I would tell them that they need to think about what they do, before they do something on the internet. Its like a chain, when you do something now, it will affect what happens later in your life. So make the affect positive, and make a good impression on interviewers, don’t do something you will regret later in the future.
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