Digital Footprint

Fourteen year old eight grader Sonia Bokhari made a bold decision and "unplugged" from social media.  While I admire Bokhari's decision to take a break from social media, the reasoning for why she arrived at the decision is unfortunate.  Growing up in her family, no one could have or use social media until they were 13 years of age or older.  So when she turned 13 she got some social media accounts and immediately perused her family member's social media pages.  To her surprise and bewilderment, she realized her family members had been posting about her for her entire life.  She confronted them and expressed her disappointment in her family members because of their disregard for her privacy.  This and the countless presentations at Bokhari's school about digital footprints and online safety caused her to take precautions with her online safety.  That ultimately translated into "unplugging" from social media.

My digital footprint is pretty small I think.  I've googled my name and I haven't found anything about me online.  However, I've googled friends of mine and they've come up.  When I was young and growing up, and teachers and adults always nagged me and my peers about social media and how permanent it is, I took them seriously, and thankfully so.  It is truly scary how permanent things online and on social media are.  

I don't  know how many times celebrities have had to apologize for tweets and posts they made years and sometimes even decades ago.  When I think about apologies for past athletes and celebrities, many different celebrities come to mind, but one that comes to mind quickly is Kevin Hart.  Kevin Hart was set to host the 2019 Oscars when old tweets and jokes he made came out.  When they came out, the Academy demanded Hart apologize or they would remove him as the host but Hart refused to apologize because he had apologized years prior.  Hart eventually stepped down.  He had made jokes and tweets almost a decade ago that were considered to be homophobic.  Hart refused to apologize because he had apologized years prior and didn't see the need to do it again because it seemed redundant.

Although I don't necessarily defend Hart I think it's interesting that when people, particularly celebrities, are doing well and are at their best, it seems that people, primarily internet trolls, try to take them down.  Digging up tweets from almost a decade ago seems pretty targeted especially when someone is doing very well in life financially.  However, that's just the reality of the digital footprint.  It's a dangerous thing and that's why I'm careful and why everyone should be careful with what they tweet, post, etc.


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