Write A Online Profile Examples

Shaping a digital footprint: Your child and the Internet

Social networking presents several challenges, with a student’s online activity subject to scrutiny at any time. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are public spaces, and while privacy settings are crucial to limiting access, content such as personal information, photographs and conversations can be both visible and permanent. These days, students should be aware that not only do friends and family read their Internet profiles but also institutions considering them as a potential candidate, particularly academic admissions counselors. According to a recent survey by Kaplan, ten percent of 320 schools surveyed admit to turning to social networking sites during the evaluation process, the majority being negatively influenced by what they saw.

“We always remind students and applicants, both to college and to LFA, that anything they write on Facebook, Twitter, email, could and most probably will be seen by someone who will be evaluating them as a potential member of the community,” says Loring Strudwick, Dean of Admissions at Lake Forest Academy.

Photo posting is the most obvious example of the potential pitfalls of social sites. Images can easily be misinterpreted out of context. Questionable behavior, even if it is not directly linked to the student in question, is a red flag to any prospective community reviewing the site. As a rule, your child should only post those images they are comfortable sharing with you.

Today, points out Trinity High School principal Dr. Toni Bouillette, handheld devices allow for an ever-present link to online use.

“Teenagers no longer email, they text and they can access the Internet while they walk down the street. It makes it more difficult for parents to be vigilant,” she adds.

Constant accessibility can often lead careless use of social networking, with students posting messages on the fly. Recently, such behavior has made headlines as a growing outlet for bullying, where inappropriate behavior is displayed in a forum that is anything but private. Students should be sure their personal privacy settings censor the content posted to their pages by others as well.

Many private schools have built their own online communities, even allowing teachers to post assignments and their own blogs on affiliated Web sites. Along with participation comes an increased effort to educate parents and students on how to better protect their online identities, for their academic futures, college admissions and beyond.

Rethinking Privacy and Publicity on Social Media: Part I ...

By “public” I mean that we are posting (1) more pieces information about ourselves online in (2) new ways (see the Zuckerberg Law of Information sharing ), and are doing so more (3) honestly than ever before . We are connected to the web more often, especially given the rise of smart phones, and new layers of information are being invented, such as “checking in” geographically. And gone are the days when you could be anyone you want to be online; today we know that online activities are augmented by the physical world. People are mostly using their real names on Facebook and nearly everything one does there has everything to do with the offline world.

But we are not as public as this suggests. We need a balance to this so-called triumph of publicity and death of anonymity (as the New York Times and Zygmunt Bauman recently declared ). “Publicity” on social media needs to be understood fundamentally as an act rife also with its conceptual opposite: creativity and concealment . And I am not talking just about those who use false identities on blogs (see Amina ) and pseudonyms on Facebook, those with super-strict privacy settings or those who only post a selective part of their multiple identities (though, I am talking about these folks, too).  My point applies to even the biggest oversharers who intimately document their lives in granular detail.

I’ll describe below how each instance of sharing online is done so creatively ) grows ever larger.