I've Been Careful with my Information Online, Right?

Digital Tattoos & Data Mines

Beginning to access social media in the late 2000s and early 2010s, I remember being told that the internet is forever. I learned that everything I posted, commented, liked, and created would find it's way back to me one way or another. When I became a teacher in 2020, I continued preaching this rhetoric to my own students, yet I believe that this statement is more true now then it was over a decade ago.

The internet has change. Our ability to access the internet, communicate, post, create, and contribute is unlike what anyone could have imagined. This ease at which we are able to use the internet accounts for the digital tattoos we present to those who interact with us online. Digital tattoo is an updated and more accurate term to describe how what we do on the internet presents a certain image of ourselves to others. It evolved from the idea of a digital footprint. While footprints may become faded or washed away over time, tattoos are permeant and forever - just like the internet. Tattoos represent something about us and are (mainly) visible to anyone. The same can be said about our lives online. Whether we realize it or not, based on what we do on the internet, we are presenting images of our lives, personalities, beliefs, and more to those around us. 

I have always been very careful about how I presented myself online. On every site I use, from social media to educational webpages, I have activated all of the possible privacy settings. Even before becoming a teacher, I have always been very careful about what I posted online. I am not one to constantly update my status or post whatever comes to my head, I am very selective about what I post or repost. Honestly, the only time I really post online is when I update my profile picture on Facebook or Instagram every year or two, but even then I hate how it posts an update and notifies my friends of the change. In the past few years, I even deactivated social media accounts such as Snapchat and Twitter/X since I wasn't contributing to the platforms so I didn't see the point in having the accounts. The extent to which I engage online really comes down to how I browse sites and like or occasionally comment on posts. All of this being said, I had mixed reactions to the amount of information I was able to find about myself while conducting a data mine. 

I was feeling pretty good about myself as I started my deep dive into my own digital presence. For variation I used Google Chrome, my default browser, and Safari, which I installed for this exercise. When simply Googling my name, first and last, first and middle (which I use for social media accounts), and my full name, only one hit came up. When I was student teaching I joined Pinterest using the email created for me by the school district to find ideas for math anchor charts. So instead of finding my Facebook or Instagram, which I expected to see, all I found was a forgotten (and no longer accessible) Pinterest account. 

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At this point, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I think something that contributed to my findings, or lack there of, was that there are many different spellings of my name. There are a lot of Caitlins, Kaitlyns, and Caitlyns present online, and it seemed that I lost among the sea of Kaitlins. 

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Things took a turn when I started using more advanced webpages. My confidence quickly faded away after typing my name into ZabaSearch, InstantCheckmate, TruthFinder, and People Finders. In all of these search engines my full name, age, town and state, and a list of immediate family members popped up immediately. 

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The biggest shock, or really scare, was the comprehensive amount of information I was able to find about myself on FamilyTreeNow. I had always prided myself on how secure I was with my information online, but this site made me rethink everything. The amount of personal information on this site was terrifying, and I was only accessing the "free report." 

After conducing this exercise, I think that a larger emphasis on digital tattoos should be included when educating children on online safety. Looking at the digital citizenship curriculum that my district uses, Common Sense Education, the platform only includes one lesson per grade level on this important topic. 

While I believe that teachers should play a major role in the education of digital citizenship and safety online, I also think that parents are responsible for enforcing and continuing these important lessons at home. While in the classroom student have a very limited and extremely monitored access to the internet. Unfortunately, many of the precautions taken at school are not taken by parents at home. This being the case, it is incredibly important for parents to continue the lessons that their child is learning in the classroom, for it's at home that children are adding the most information to their digital tattoo.