When reading “Understanding and Maintaining Your Privacy When Writing With Digital Technologies”, I learned a lot. The article made me realize how I never thought about the privacy that I never established in my digital space. For the longest time, all my social media platforms were public. I had close to 2,000 followers and it was growing daily. I had started this page in the sixth grade and honestly thought nothing of it.
Establishing the Privacy
As I’ve grown older, I realized that the followers I had knew nothing about me. They knew nothing about who I truly was, all they knew of me was my digital footprint. Everything that I had ever posted on social media was what had established their definition of me. As a 20 year old, thinking about that, it became scary. Over 1,900 people were on my page that I had never met. I woke up, 3 weeks ago and decided that this wasn’t okay anymore. Taking back my privacy and truly deciding who I let in and who I wouldn’t. One weekend I sat and removed 1,900 people off my Instagram and made my page private.
Actually becoming private
Seeing that drop in followers startled me at first. I swore I was going to be the next instagram influencer, but I knew that something had to change. The biggest reason I had in doing this was because I am currently a daycare teacher, and a future certified teacher. As a teacher, there definitely needs to be a separation between your work life and personal life. On top of that since I was public, I had noticed multiple parents of students from my job had found my page and were seeing the things that I posted. Now, I am a firm believer in “teachers are normal humans outside of work”, but having my page public was just a mix between business and pleasure. I needed the privacy I never established in my digital space. Privacy is very important especially when you have an extremely serious job where people might not understand that you are human, too.
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