Once it’s Online, there’s no going back                      October, 11th, 2015

                                                                  By: Yoon-Jae Hong

 

       Did you know that starting from 2005; about 1.1 billion internet

users have been increasing every five years? Recently, internet users

have been increasing by a large amount, especially the 21st century,

and will continue to grow. The 21st century is like a time where babies

are born with a social media in their hands. Why is that? It’s because

it’s a time where technology has developed and the many users of the

social media. The digital footprint is like something that follows you

around and picks up what you left behind. As soon as you go online

you leave informations about behind.

       Whenever you walk on sand, you leave a footprint, right? A digital footprint is just like that. You search, press like, comment, chat, and post something online it leaves a permanent footprint behind, which can’t be deleted. For example, if you were to click like on your friend’s picture the internet would mark the the picture you liked, whos you liked, at what time, on what source, where in the world etc. Maybe you think that you could easily press the delete button and it suddenly disappears, or going on private mode like Incognito. You think you wouldn’t leave anything behind, but  Incognito mode is a browser that makes you feel private. Incognito mode itself notes that your service provider, your employer, and the websites could see your browsing activity when you’re on incognito mode. Online, there is no way that you could get rid of your digital footprint, because you probably can’t find it. When you delete your history you think it’s all gone, but you only think that. Actually, the internet copies of anything you do online and leaves a mark, a footprint.

       When you’re born as a newborn baby your parents film the moment or save the moment somehow on an electronic device and sends it to their friends and family. That’s when your digital dossier starts. For example, when I was born my grandparents were on a flight on that day and couldn’t see me, but my father took a camera and filmed the moment. My parents sent it to my grandparents online, and that’s when I first entered the digital dossier.  According to The World FactBook there are 4.3 births every minute in the world. That means every minute almost four babies are starting their digital dossier, their digital life.

       Your digital footprint is what shows you as a digital native on your online life. Sure, your online life and your offline life could be different, but your online life can have a huge impact on your offline life. For example, if you’re applying for a job and managers check your profile online and find a picture of you on drugs, what would the managers think of you? They would think that they shouldn’t pick you as an employee, because could still be on drugs. You could think that when you were in college that was the cool thing, but later on it becomes the bad thing. That’s the negative side of the digital footprint. Nothing in the world has just the negative side or just the positive side, it always has both. The digital footprint also has both the negative side and the positive side. The digital footprint can be useful to protect your digital reputation. Also it could have a positive effect on applying for jobs. For example, if you make a nice portfolio to use for applying to a job, the managers would make a note for them to come back to you, and you might get the job.

       Have you ever researched something and had information that wasn’t related to your topic come up? Well, that’s because of the filter bubble. The filter bubble is a website algorithm which tries to find what information the user wants to see, based on the past searches. For example, when I searched my name up on Google, weird social media accounts, and weird pictures came out. It’s because of the filter bubble. I go on to Facebook every day, so the internet thinks that I would be interested in Facebook accounts or other social media accounts. The search engine is also important. The search engine changes by where in the world you are, what you have searched in the past, what websites you’ve been onto, and more. This also relates to the filter bubble because the search engine is what makes the filter bubble work. The different websites are what matters too. Again I searched my name up on Google, then on Bing. I could see that the information’s had a huge difference. On Google it gave me a bunch of social media accounts related to my name, and on Bing it gave me a lot of academic information related to my name. I was in the same spot, at the same time, I searched my name up from only 2 different websites, and the results made a huge difference.

       The digital footprint is what helps you keep your information safe. Whenever you would want to post a picture online or comment something for someone else's post, think about if this will affect you later on in the future. Always think about the digital footprint and why, if you search something up on the internet and get random results come up. Now you would know why you would get the results, and also try out different types of searching websites to see the difference. If you did something wrong in the past, try to make it up now, or later thinking about who you would meet, and jobs you would apply to. Always remember that you can’t get rid of what you did in the past, but you can make up for it in the future.