In this day and age, it is imperative that students and teachers alike understand the concept of a digital footprint. Hewson (2013) suggests that a “digital footprint outlines a person’s online activities, including their use of social networking platforms” (p 14) and encourages teachers to establish one early in their career to help grow a Professional Learning Network (PLN) of people in the same field to provide support and encouragement during initial teaching years and throughout a person’s career.

This seems like a great idea, but there is more to consider here. As the popular Netflix documentary, Connected explains in its first episode “Surveillance” (2020), your digital footprint is probably bigger than you think; it contains every interaction that you have ever engaged in online and is often shared between websites and companies, even without your permission. As a future teacher, this tension between benefits and detriments is something that I need to be aware of, and make sure that my future students understand.

In theory, users must give permission for apps to access certain types of data … (e.g., to record location or audio data). However, people are often unaware of the data they are providing, are tricked into giving access to more data, and struggle to understand current permission systems that are unspecific and ineffective in preventing the collection of personal data from smartphones. Finally, many apps find creative side channels to routinely extract data … regardless of whether permission has been provided. (Stachl, et al. 2020, p. 1)

Additionally, information can be used in ways that take unfair advantage of subconscious tendencies as Stachl, et al. (2020) elucidate, “Data-driven inferences about individuals’ personality traits … have major implications for individual privacy because they allow for personality-based targeting and manipulation” (p. 1), so there are potential unforeseen dangers in the digital environment that all users should be taught about. To add to this, Robinson and Gran also bring up possible emotional costs and unequitable emotional labor related to privacy, or lack thereof, that teachers must be conscious of when assigning any digitally based work. If a student does not have access to personal devices and privacy when using them, they experience additional emotional work in comparison to a student who enjoys these liberties and does not have to think about whether someone is reading over their shoulder.

In many ways, it would seem that the detriments of digital engagement outweigh the benefits. However, as Richardson (2008) points out, “Your personal footprint – and to some extent your school’s – is most likely being written without you” showing that the reality of today’s internet culture makes it nearly impossible not to participate on some level, even if a person is not actively meaning to develop a digital footprint. This raises the question: Is it better to let it happen without you, or is it better to become active and take control of what your digital footprint looks like?

Personally, I prefer the latter. I prefer to choose carefully what I post on the internet, and am in the process of building my own awareness of the privacy implications that digital activities invite. By doing this, I plan to have a knowledge base to offer future students, so that I can let them know what the possibilities include. It is likely that the benefits of the online world will only continue to grow, but as they do it is also plausible that the dangers will expand with them. I plan to teach my students about both with hope that they will gain the skills to mitigate online hazards while enjoying aspects of the internet that benefit their learning experience.

References

Hewson, K. (2013). What Size Is Your Digital Footprint? Phi Delta Kappan, 94(7), 14–17.

Richardson, W. (2008). Footprints in the Digital Age. Educational Leadership, 66(3), 16–19.

Robinson, L., & Gran, B. K. (2018). No Kid Is an Island: Privacy Scarcities and Digital Inequalities. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(10), 1413–1430. https://doi-org.prxy.lib.unbc.ca/10.1177/0002764218787014

Stachl, C., Au, Q., Schoedel, R., Gosling, S. D., Harari, G. M., Buschek, D., Theres Völkel, S., Schuwerk, T., Oldemeier, M., Ullmann, T., Hussmann, H., Bischl, B., & Bühner, M. (2020). Predicting personality from patterns of behavior collected with smartphones. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(30), 17680–17687. https://doi-org.prxy.lib.unbc.ca/10.1073/pnas.1920484117

Surveillance. (2020). Connected. episode 1.