My Digital Footprint!

After watching Jesse Miller’s Ted talk, I wanted to find out what would happen if I googled my own name and some variations. Luckily for me, I have quite a common name but this did not stop google from finding me. There are many Carter White’s who seem to have done lots in the world and many unrelated pictures to myself but there were still photos of me on there. With a simple search of my first and last name in the search-bar, I saw pictures of myself and the first link was the Thompson Rivers University athletics page with my personal physical attributes and stats right there without even clicking into it. I could even find links from events I was involved in all the way back to 2017 on the first page. I found this interesting so I then added the word “Cranbrook” behind it as I have lived here for my entire grade school years. Once I did this, it narrowed the pictures on the images page to mostly me, and also only had links relating to me on the first search page. *Attached is Jesse Miller’s TedTalk.

My Feelings

I was very shocked with how much information of myself I was able to find with this one search, however, I was almost more surprised to see none of my social media accounts. I have facebook, instagram, and Twitter/X. They are all private accounts and locked up, but I put in the full account name and still could not find it through a search. I am happy to see that the privacy settings all work well. With the other links however, I did have to sign a consent form from TRU but there were a few links up there that I would have never guessed could be brought back to me. For myself, this does not make me feel insecure or not “privacy protected” enough. I am comfortable with everything out there that I was able to find but I could see why this is a big issue for other people. Technology will continue to thrive and develop especially with how reliant we are towards it. It is an amazing thing but can used for the wrong purposes bringing in privacy issues. This makes me think, if children keep using social media and posting without knowing consequences, this could lead to many future issues for them. We as educators will need to not only show good programs and apps they can use to help, but also learn, and teach how to be safe online.