WEEK 15: Audit Your Online Presence

My online footprint for is much larger as I would expect. I googled myself recently, and I saw dance competition images, social media profiles, my email, family pictures, art projects from high school, relatives, and my job. The only personal website I have is my blogger pages, so I do not have a  professional footprint quite yet. 

Multiple of my social media profiles pop up in my google search, including Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. The information available to the public reveals a lot about my hobbies and history. I was in a lot of dance competitions and many of those photos are in google images, and even the magazine I was on will permanently be on my page. 

Personally, I have been fortunate enough to be distant enough from social media to have positive  experiences with any of the platforms. However, I do worry about the amount of time I spend on social media, considering that I am more and more involved with it due to what I want to do: digital marketing and communications. I could spend a long time on it, and when I do, I often have long detoxes afterwards. I have learned that the more people understood my own distant position with social media, the less pressure I had to participate on social media. 

As I and many other students enter in the digital advertising world, it will be a battle to bring a positive connotation to social media, and ethically, this is vital for the health of younger generations growing up with this. Just like the girl that quit social media, parents and older age groups are new to this technology too, and parents are unsure on how to deal with it as well. A while ago, I read about a highly respected CEO that is an owner of one of the social media platforms. According to the article, he only lets his kids use social media 20 minutes a week. I do not know the whole story when it comes to the impact of social media, but I do know when to listen and follow leaders like this because they know more information than we have access to.