How might your digital footprint affect your future opportunities?

Your digital footprint can affect things such as job applications, college applications and personal things like how people view you or how they treat you differently than others.

In job applications and college/university applications the use of your digital footprint can be a crucial part in deciding whether you will be suitable for it or not. In most jobs, if you were to post/comment anything inappropriate, hateful or basically anything that would make you look less of responsible/reliable person it would make it much harder for jobs and/or schools to accept you. In another case, if you were to post anything and a family, friend or peer were to see it, it could effect how others view you and they could start treating you differently.

How could social media be used in a positive manner? 

The use of social media could be used positively to express your interests/hobbies.

It could also be used to spread important information such as global issues, social media issues, school events and many other things. If someone were to use social media positively but chooses not to do these things listed above, they could also be there positively by not making drama and/or not cancelling others for unreasonable reasons. You can simply just be on social media and not post anything on your feed (or comments) and that could be a way of contributing positively. Contributing positively and not negatively isn’t hard, all you have to do is rethink your decision before putting it out.

What red flags or warnings would indicate that someone you are talking to online may in fact be unsafe?

Social media in fact isn’t the safest place to be wandering on mindlessly, especially if you are talking with strangers that you have no connection within the real world. Talking with people online could be dangerous, therefore you need to notice the red flags in these scenarios just in case. Make sure that they aren’t taking photos from online; you can double check this by copying the image they are using and paste it into a search engine.

You can also check their name that their using online, you can check this by searching up their digital footprint, see if theirs anything about them and if its bad, their most likely not the person you want to be talking to. Finally, the questions they ask can also be a huge indicator that they are in fact unsafe. If the person you are communicating with asks unsafe questions like, where do you live?, what’s your full name?, how old are you?, and much more. To recap, check the picture(profile), the name, and the questions.

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