What do “liking” a tweet, searching on google, referencing sources, and commenting on a post have in common? Even though they are seemingly unrelated, these are all actions that leave a digital footprint. You may or may not have truly experienced the importance of “digital footprints” or “digital citizenship,” but it is a pivotal concept to be aware of while revealing yourself on the Internet, especially in this digital era.
Digital footprints are left in many ways, for example, leaving a comment on someone’s post, registering accounts, and even uploading videos. It can be an action as automatic as pressing a like on someone else’s post or as harmful as posting a toxic comment under a video. Either way, the entirety of actions done are the Internet are what you reveal about yourself online.
Being a Twitter and Facebook user, I don’t reveal too much of myself on social media. Most of the times, I only “like” posts from my closest friends or environmentally concerning ideas that I can respond to (UN Environment, UNESCO, Marine Connection…basically everything about the ocean!). In other times, I use social media to communicate with my clubs and classmates for schoolwork purposes. This can certainly sound a little paranoid, but for me, cyber safety is the priority while I hope every footprint that I leave on the Internet can be beneficial to the world rather than being pure entertainment for short-term purposes.
Whenever I see people commenting on unsecure posts (replying to random sources so that the source could message more information seems like a trend nowadays), revealing every moment of their lives, or chatting with made-up identities, it’s extremely difficult for me to imagine people not thinking about safety on the internet. The Internet is a totally different world than real-life, but danger could be anywhere if people don’t watch out.
But it’s not just safety, the purpose of being a digital citizen is not to appear as superficially “perfect”, but to be able to leave influential footprints that records your mental growth throughout the years to come.
Photo Credit: L.C.Nøttaasen via Compfight cc
Here is an insightful story on the significance of digital footprints:
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