Sunday 18 September 2016

Digital Discretion By Majorie Harvey

teewhy-hive.blogspot.co.uk
This past weekend we wrapped on another Girls Who Rule the World mentoring camp. It is always a life changing experience for both the girls and the women who share their life experiences. This year there was significant emphasis placed on the digital footprint we are all leaving in the world.

In more than one session we talked about the fact that one’s social media presence can have profound impact on, college applications, employment and even social perception. Professionals from various fields shared their accounts of how social media impacts and often influences who they do business with. In my Girl Talk session I gave the young ladies the same advice I’ve given my own children, “protect your name and reputation by keeping your pages private. Not everything is for everyone.” I also suggest if your page is going to be public that some of your experiences and thoughts you choose to keep private.
Nowadays socially, we seem to be obsessed with oversharing:  the habit of sharing everything, all the time, with everybody. TMI to the 3rd power! But the reality is that what we think, and how we feel changes often over time. When we expose our thoughts and feelings excessively we place them in public view for others to judge and scrutinize with little to no room for our own unique interpretation or far worse, later on no consideration of our personal evolution. The expressed ideas become indelible digital content in the cyber universe for all eternity, even if we decide later to delete what we once needed to announce.
Screenshots and other means of copying content ensure what you once thought or felt, once documented, never actually goes away. A pretty frightening thought when you think how much your ideas have changed over the last 5-10 years. For young people the changes are even faster and more dramatic.
That’s why I like to practice digital discretion. It’s the art of sharing simple light-hearted things in the digital space that won’t come back to haunt you. By focusing on light-hearted matters that promote laughter, family, love, true friendship or true topics of inspiration, backlash is minimized. Now there will always be critics and nay-sayers. But by practicing digital discretion you can protect your reputation by projecting the essence of who you are and what essentially you are all about. Try it! Leave the negativity behind and remember, a little goes a long way.

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