footprint2019 – Narissa’s Blog

How might your digital footprint affect your future opportunities?

A digital footprint in simple terms is data that is left behind by users and digital services. Digital footprints are created when data about your personal life is released by a user to share information about oneself by websites or social media.

An example of how our digital footprint can affect future opportunities is through college admission. When applying to a college or university the committee of that university will look at all aspects of the applicant, this often means the applicant’s online presence. Colleges can monitor even the slightest details they can find about yourself in order for them to make their decision of acceptance into that specific college or university. Certain things online can affect your university application, this could include the one blog post you made or the one video you made even a picture that you posted. Whatever is online that relates to you could be. something that can limit your opportunities in the upcoming future. Everyone should be able to know how important digital footprints can be because every person has access to them. As said by Mrs.Marsha Thompson, media specialist “students need to know how to improve and shape their personal digital footprint the should and want to shape it”.

Secondly, another example of an effect could be jobs. In reality, you can have different goals. It could range from being a professional athlete to finishing university and then going onto a job. If your choice is to go through a career path then you will have to be careful of what the future of your digital footprint as in may affect what your future may entail. According to The Career Builder, 63% of managers that are hiring decide not to hire an applicant because of something they found to be questioned about them on a social networking site. This could include posts about illegal stuff, bad communication skills or even criminal behavior. However, if you can be someone who contains well behavior or even be a person who thinks before they do something online the outcome of this process can be very different. Nowadays students aren’t aware that these things can affect them whether it has to do with careers, schooling or anything else. This could mean if you are up for a job against someone else who has the same credentials and you but they have a better digital footprint they can be chosen over you just for that exact reason.

Describe at 3 strategies that you can use to keep your digital footprint appropriate and safe?

As said before your digital footprint can be very important in your future so it is important that you keep it safe and appropriate. You can do this by either asking your parents or another adult if they think the photo is appropriate before posting, be respectful to others online and consider what you are posting. Firstly ask your parents or an adult if they think this is appropriate to put online. The reason to do this is that they have experience doing these type of things so it would help you to understand why certain ideas should or should not be online. Secondly, you can be respectful to other people online. Respect means that you can acknowledge the person and be honest with them by not hurting their feelings. This is an important thing to do because if you treat people the way they want to be treated you will be treated the right way as well. While everyone wants to be respected, what comes through online may not be respectful. When creating change it starts with you. You have to be able to have a digital footprint that is respectful to others. Lastly, consider what you are putting online in order to be safe and appropriate. When online it is very important to have a safe digital footprint in order to do this you should be able to look and consider what is it that you are putting on your digital footprint. An example of this if is you are posting something illegal onto a social platform you should rethink what you are posting. If you don’t it can affect your future very badly as stated before.

What information did you learn that you would pass on to other students?

It is immensely important for someone to learn as much as they can about digital footprints. This is because as stated before it can have a huge effect on you in different ways and honestly if you want to achieve these goals you don’t want the footprint to get in the way of reaching those goals. I would tell younger students to not post everything you do because in a way it may not be the safest idea for your future especially if you want to get into a certain a career through schooling or a job. Everyone should know how anything that is online can be seen by anyone which is a scary thought at first but you can change that in many ways as said before. Every person should be wary of what they post because anyone can see whether they want them to or not.