Who Am I?

I know who I am, but after today’s lecture it makes me wonder if people out there perceive me the way they should be. I knew that once something was posted online it was there for good, but I didn't realize how easy it was for ANYONE to find it. All you have to do is type someone’s name in Google and you instantly know at least 5 things about them. Then you click on one of the links that pop up and you now know 3 more things about that person. Then another click takes you to their Facebook profile and you now know anything you need to know about this person’s life. It’s a scary thought that anyone in the world has access to this information – employers, family, friends, even people that you will never meet.

I have been fairly careful in regards to what I post online. I don’t write on Facebook groups, and I’m not one to say anything hurtful. I don’t put pictures up of myself that could cause one to think poorly of me. Just to reassure myself though, I Googled my name to see what came up. The first few things that came up were song cover’s that I had posted on YouTube (not my best ones either). That’s something that I will look into changing. A few articles came up about me from when I played rep fast pitch along with my twitter and Blogger accounts. So instantly anyone who Googled me would know that I sing, play sports, and go to Ryerson for Radio and Television Arts. They then can assume I live in Toronto or in the GTA. That’s a lot of information for a random person to stumble upon.

The fact that people I don’t even know can gain all this information by the click of a button will defiantly change my approach to my online presence. Not so much in the sense that what I have online is inappropriate, but in the sense that anyone who has access to my Facebook account knows where I live and where I went to high school. Anytime I post a status saying where I am and what I am doing, people I don’t know could potentially be reading that. I am now more aware of this and will take more precautions.

Though it makes me slightly uncomfortable that this information is available to anyone, I think it is important for one to have a strong online presence, especially in our field of work. If I wanted to get a job at a company that required me to post blogs and tweet about upcoming event and a potential employer Googled me and saw that I’ve never tweeted or blogged in my life, I wouldn’t get the job. So one has to weigh out the good and the bad and see if it’s worth it. For someone like me who wants to get into a field where digital media is a part of everything, then it’s essential to have a strong digital identity. On the other hand there are people out there who are completely unaware that all their information is floating around on the web. Some people have Facebook just to keep in touch with old friends and are unaware that they have to turn on privacy settings if they want to keep anything hidden. I personally think that sites such as Facebook should automatically have full privacy settings on and give you the option to turn them off for people who are unaware how exposed they are. But at the end of the day, everyone knows that once you post something online it can never fully be erased. So if you are willing to say something online, or post a picture, you have to know that there is a chance it could come back and haunt you. If you want everyone to see your cards, lay them on the table. But you can’t be surprised if you lose.