At the present time, digital identity became a predominant feature in our daily life where we show who we are through digital context. From scanning MySejahtera app at the shops we visit to identification card to verify age, digital identity has become an ingrained habit to provide of our credentials to the world.
I was born into an era of immense technological advances and innovation. I have been witnessing the progression of the internet from time to time as I grow. As someone who has an active online presence, I have never realised how much digital traces that I am leaving behind. The online persona helped me find the social identities that I have developed both consciously and unconsciously throughout my life. I actively contribute my content on social media platforms like Instagram, and Twitter. Most of the time, I update my Instagram account by posting photos and videos of myself. I mainly use Instagram to express my fashion to my audience. Furthermore, the app helped me to express my thoughts and opinions on several rampant issues that needed to be addressed like racism, gender inequality, sexual or cyber harassment. Instagram is vital app for me to connect with people as I have quite a number of followers on the app. Nonetheless, I do not share my full name and college name with my audience. Once, I have received a message from a stranger saying that he will be waiting outside my college campus. Several articles regarding stalking students on college campus left me concerned for my safety.
I also use twitter to express my thoughts and opinions by posting and retweeting tweets. I mainly use the app to get latest updates and news. A lot of people use the app to be alerted to breaking news both locally and globally. I do not own a Facebook account for my personal use. However, prior to joining my new college, I have created a new account early in September this year. The app helped me to get updates from the college administration on new activities, workshop, programs and announcements. The Facebook group that I have joined further giving me updates on assignments and class activities. I use YouTube and search engines to browse quick information that I am looking using phrases and keywords. Sometimes I leave comments or reviews on some YouTube videos. When I am engrossed in a video, I share link of the video with my friends and family members.
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| My Instagram story |
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| My college Facebook group |
Furthermore, I own a tiktok account. Tiktok is a main account for me to interact with people from all walks of life. Often times, I post fashion videos like makeup and trendy fashion wears. I seldom post funny videos of myself. Most of the time I use the app for entertainment, book recommendations, recipes, conspiracy theories, business and fashion. Recently, I have started using LinkedIn to showcase my professional online presence. This is a good platform for me to build credibility and create a meaning network for my future job employment.
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| My LinkedIn profile |
My other online persona is being an online shopper. I began to build this persona when I grew older and started college. I actively use shopping apps and websites like Shopee, Watson, Guardian Food panda, and KMT. The online persona cultivated my self-awareness on the personal information that I share through these apps and websites. The personal details that I share includes full name, phone number, location, home address, email address and bank account number.
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| (Photograph by ronstik/Getty Images/iStockphoto) |
Sharing my personal details on these apps and websites have unexpectedly put me into alarming situations like receiving phishing scam calls from unknown numbers for a number of times. Often times, these scammers impersonate as bank tellers to steal my bank information and request me to do certain payments that I am not required to. Being aware of these situations, I have set up two factor authentication to ensure a safe and secure online shopping.
When I working towards my digital identity, Johari’s window becomes a tool that enables me to know about how others perceive me on my online presence. My arena shows that I am creative, share ideas, fun, opinionated, supportive and responsive. Reflecting back on these responses, it is true that I show my creativeness through my photos and videos on my Instagram account. This includes food recipes, fashion outfits and nail arts. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, I often response to contemporary issues by expressing my ideas strongly and that is why my audience on these platforms seeing me as an opinionated person.
When I looking through the blind spot, I am not surprised seeing the responses given by the people because I am fully aware of how people perceive me as. It clearly shows that people most likely know my online activities. For example, having a diverse social media, curated identity. This can be seen on the variety of contents that I post like foods, fashion trends, movie reviews, contemporary topics and music. However, I have not come to acknowledgement on some of the responses which are initiating discussion and professional online. I realised that replying people’s Instagram stories which led me to initiate a discussion. In addition, the mapping of the 2D illustration shows some underlying views on online presence. I have found that I am a resident. As a digital native, I actively leave my digital footprints on these five main apps which are Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, Shopee and MySejahtera.
To conclude, I would like to state my overall view on my digital identity. As I mentioned, I am not fully aware of how much digital footprints that I am leaving online. These footprints and the online personas that I have developed are my online identities in this immense technological world. Some footprints have gotten into scary situations and situations could turn into a nightmare if I am not cautious enough on what I share online.
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