How Much of a Digital Footprint Do I Leave Behind?

Have you ever thought about how much information there is about you on social media websites? When you sign up for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social media platform, you are prompted to submit your full name, email address, a profile picture, and maybe a home address or phone number. This data is then stored online and unless you make your profiles private, everyone is able to see your information.

I admit, I do use social media every single day just like my family and friends do. I wouldn't say that I am the most conscious person when it comes to my profiles because my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are all public for the world to see. Because of this, I believe that I leave behind a pretty big digital footprint.

My most used social media sites would be YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. I share a lot about myself on YouTube by video taping myself wherever I go, showing off where I am, what I'm doing and who I am with. If I wanted to I could set all my videos to private, but that would defeat the purpose of even posting them in the first place. YouTube can be a bit "sketchy" at times because you don't know exactly who is watching your videos or how they stumbled across your video or channel to begin with.

When it comes to Instagram, I have two accounts. My first account, which I have since about middle school, is my main account that I post often on about for my family and friends to see. My second account is one that I have recently made is strictly for my YouTube channel. I have an Instagram account for YouTube because that way when I post about new videos being published on my channel, I can post a picture to Instagram, add hashtags that are relevant to the video to the caption so that way more people come across my post and then they might be inclined to check out my channel, which helps me gain more subscribers all together.

Now for Twitter, I rarely ever tweet anything unless I am tagging my sister in something I found funny. Mostly I retweet or "like" certain tweets that I find humorous or relatable in some way. Usually I don't find myself on twitter as much I used to in high school because back then everyone was on twitter and that was the main way of finding out gossip, who asked who to prom, or whether or not our high school won their championship football or basketball games.

If you do just a regular search of me name on Google, you will find all of my profile pictures, random photos my parents tagged me in on facebook, an article from a magazine I wrote about my mom, instagram photos, YouTube thumbnails, and so much more.

I believe social media can make people lonely to an extent, especially when you see pictures of your friends or family all together and you feel left out because you didn't get the invite to join them. This has happened to me a few times and for a hour or two it makes me depressed, lonely and makes me almost hate social media because I had to look at something I didn't want to see. But for a lot of other people, they are perfectly happy with everything social media has to offer. Take my step dad for example, he is pretty much obsessed with Facebook and is constantly on it checking out what everyone's latest status is. He has never got tire of it or has gotten depressed over any aspect of it at all, and I don't think he ever will. 

So, what does your digital footprint look like?