My online identity

Recently I have got an assignment for Social Media and Society class to find out what my online identity is. At a first glance the task seems pretty easy. Basically you are supposed to type in your “Name Surname” in google and then look through the results you’ll get. Normally there supposed to be a bunch of links containing your personal information. There are also could be images and videos of you. Most of people would certainly see links to their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts as well as other social media tools on a first page. However, that would only work if you have always exposed your personal information on the web. My case is different.

I was born in Russia where we don’t really use Facebook that much, instead there is a similar web site called “Vkontakte”.The name of the website translates to something like “stay connected”.  It is so popular amongst Russians for several reasons. First of all, it gives you access to a lot of content such as movies and TV-shows, music and so on. Let’s not touch the legal aspect of this issue, because it would be enough talk for another blog posting. The website also has so-called communities where people can discuss topics they are interested in or post pictures of their art works to get others opinions on them and so on. Considering the following it’s not a surprise I didn’t have a Facebook account till I turned 18.

That time I went to Italy and met a lot of local people who were not familiar with the Russian social network. After that I had to create a Facebook account to stay in touch with them. However, I didn’t want to use my real surname.  I had never done it before. It always made me feel uncomfortable to expose my personal information to strangers. So I decided to use my grandmother’s surname instead.  Until the time I moved to Canada I didn’t want to share anything personal: my birth date, my interests and likes, anything related to my personal life. . I was basically the complete opposite of a person that Jennifer Golbeck describes in her article “Why We Overshare Online”. The only exclusion I made was for pictures, since I had a lot and didn’t mind showing off a little.

This January I’ve started an online course about the social media and its impact on society. The more I’ve been discovering how useful social media is in real life, the more my views been changing. I started sharing things I’m interested and even updating statuses on Facebook. I also use my Instagram account more often now. I actually enjoy it, since it has helped me to find out some of my friends are way more like-minded with me than I thought before. The biggest step I made was when I finally changed the surname on my Facebook profile to the real one. I started looking for a job and thought my potential employer might want to check my Facebook profile. I think this is a great example how important the online identity is today. Even a person like me who’s very conservative about privacy has to adapt her views in order to do something as essential as getting a job.

Since the change is really fresh, my Facebook profile doesn’t come up on the first page if I search for my “Name Surname”. The same situation is with my Instagram where I don’t even have any reference to my name or surname. I don’t have a Twitter, Tumbler or any other social network accounts. It all comes to one simple conclusion. When I googled my “Name Surname” to find out what my online identity actually is nothing related to me came out. It was literally nothing, neither on the first page nor on the tenth. No videos or images of me.

I have mixed feelings about the absence of my online identity linked to my name. On one hand this is what I wanted. There is nothing linked to my personal information that could disturb my privacy in any way. On the other hand I might miss some chances to improve my life while hiding my online presence. I think the opportunities that the right online image provides are overbalancing the negative aspect of it. Therefore I plan to take an effort to build up an online image I would be proud of. Something I would want to show up when somebody searches for me.

References

Golbeck, J. (2014, October 15). Why we overshare online. [blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201410/why-we-overshare-online