Everyday, millions of photos are shared, posted and tweeted around the globe. Thanks to the invention of the, people distanced thousands of miles away from each other can converse with one another. With apps including snapchat and instagram, you can show case your life to a massive audience. This is when the digital footprint comes in. By sharing anything online, you are leaving a trail of information easily accessible. In this assignment, I will be googling myself to discover my personal Digital Footprint, showing how what you post can positively or negatively impact your career, share three strategies to ensure your Digital Footprint is positive and inform other students about my discoveries.

1) Google yourself

When I googled my first and last name, the results were positive. On the first page, a facebook account of another Nico Millenaar popped up. I clicked on the account and there were no photos or misleading information. The reason I wanted to see if the account had positive messages is because if all the pictures posted were negative or un-flattering, people could suspect it was me. The person had no profile picture so strangers could suspect it was my account. Overall, thankfully the account owner was a positive person. Following this heading, my instagram account surfaced. I am not too active on the account and only have one picture of a sunset in Hawaii. Following my instagram account, a news article from the Tri-city news surfaced. The article’s heading is, “Coquitlam Cheetahs set B.C records”. Written in 2015, the newsletter discusses a couple athletes including myself who set provincial records in Track and Field. The three links below this article are the Track and field club’s roster that I belong to, a list of award winners at a banquette that I was a part of and track meet results from previous meets. At the bottom of the first page, the roster for the 2004-born BC soccer provincial team pops up because my name is within the roster. In a nutshell, all the information on the first page of my google search was positive and not worrisome. When I switched my browser search from “All” to “Images”, I could not find any pictures of myself on the internet. The search titles I used to find images of myself were, “Nico Millenaar”, “Nico Millenaar soccer”, Nico Millenaar track and field”, “Nico Millenaar Coquitlam metro ford soccer club” and “Nico Millenaar Coquitlam Cheetahs”. Images of other athletes from the same sports club as me were visible but none of me. If someone else were to view my Digital Footprint, I believe they would think I am an accomplished athlete but know little about my personality or appearance. Although my Footprint is positive and not haunting, I strive to establish a more complete Digital Footprint with images capturing my personality and life outside of sports. Employers and School board officials who check Digital Footprints are interested in aspects of life other than sports so by uploading photos of volunteering, I may be more likely to be hired or accepted into schools.

2) How might your Digital Footprint affect your future opportunities?

The major stigma around the internet is that whatever you post, send or share will forever be traceable. This trace that you leave behind is called your “Digital Footprint”. All movements on social media and google searches are accessible to the entire world, therefor, you must be careful. A study by USA today found that 35% of college admissions check applicants’ social medias before accepting them. Now, why is this? Similar to the companies reasons for checking your online profile, the schools want to know if you are as credible as you say you are. Perhaps your application could include job experience and volounteer work, however, if you have a photo of yourself underage drinking on your instagram account you won’t be accepted. Being aware of the dark tunnel or bright light you leave behind you is important so that your stupid decisions don’t come back to haunt you. Your Footprint could not only affect you academically long-term, but politically as well. Newly elected mayor of Port Moody, Rob Vagramov, was under vicious heat by residents this autumn after a video on his Facebook surfaced when running for mayor. The video was posted in 2014 and shows Rob Vagramov asking a homeless man to “chug” a beer in return for a free lunch. Vagramov repeatedly swore in the footage and was not friendly to most viewers. He later apologized on Global News stating, “I am not the same person now as I was back then”. Although he won the candidacy in Port Moody, this video negatively affected his image in the eyes of many others who saw the clip. I believe this is a prime example of how one video linked to your Digital Footprint could effect yourself negatively long term. Although Rob Vagramov states that he is “not the same person” as in the video, most people look beyond this comment and judge him for his actions. All in all, we all have the ability to post meaningful photos or comments of good deeds so I suggest volunteering to build a positive Digital Footprint in world’d eyes.

3) Describe at least 3 strategies you can use to keep your Digital Footprint appropriate and safe

Since we have already covered how all Internet activity is infinitely visible, I have developed four strategies to keep your Digital Footprint appropriate and safe. The first strategy is to not overshare on social media. Not only do your friends not want to know what you ate for breakfast three days ago, but all the information you post can be accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The only way to certainly keep your Digital Footprint safe is to not share all events in your life on social media. For future reference, do not post something you would not want your entire town to know about because your posts are accessible to anyone. Secondly, Keep a list of accounts created on social media. With hundreds of mainstream social media apps, our brain often forgets which ones we have registered on to. In order to shy away from embarrassing pictures and tweets from our younger selves, permanently deleting accounts helps to clear up these activities from our Digital Footprint. This will help fog up moments of unwanted attention from the rest of the wold. Another great way to ensure your Digital Footprint is appropriate and safe is to use a privacy setting. Privacy settings help restrict strangers from viewing your photos and allows the user to choose their audience. On most social media apps, the default settings are set to Public. This means users must manually change the account status to private. The final strategy involves thinking long term versus short term. Sometimes we get carried away and comment/post something in the moment to receive attention from our friends or followers but disregard the longterm effects it could behold. A few seconds of laughter over a silly post could result in a lifetime of regret in the future.Overall, I will definitely use these strategies to preserve a clean Digital Footprint without any dark patches.

4) What information did you learn today that you would pass onto other students? How would you go about telling them?

By googling myself, researching strategies and realizing the affects a Digital Footprint has on someone’s career, I have constructed a few key pieces of information that will benefit other students. An important sentence we should all replay in our heads before posting a picture is, “Will I regret this long term?”. If you are absorbed into the short term benefits of your post, your mind will not fully comprehend how severely your future could be damaged. Try to envision your social media activity from the eyes of an employer because you will more likely shy away from posting illegal or embarrassing pictures. Another key piece of information I would pass onto other students would be to not overshare information online. If you post unnecessarily or too often, an employer could assume you are too focused on social media and not on your job. This could destroy your opportunity to land a job or scholarship. Finally, I would advise all students to set their social media accounts to private. This will ensure that unwanted strangers or third party sites will have a much harder time stealing information on you or committing identity fraud. In order to deliver this information I would first show them the video of Rob Vagramov. After watching the somewhat funny but negatively portrayed video, I would comment afterwards, “Can you believe he will have to live with this video on the internet for the rest of his life. Imagine if this happened to us?”. Hopefully the student agrees the video is damaging to his career, because then aI would list the three key pieces of information I listed that will help them not make Rob’s mistake.All in all, everything we post will be on the internet infinitely so you can either use it in a positive way or negative way.

All photos found on pexels except for Rob Vagramov screen shot.

MLA format for Rob Vagramov photo:

Gary McKenna, Tri-City News, Vagramov video draws fire in Port Moody mayoral race, Rob Vagramov, 2014, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.