Would you put up compromising pictures of yourself throughout your school? Would you go to your parent’s place of work and hang up posters explaining your deepest darkest thoughts? Would you rock up to your grandparents house and replace baby pictures of you in albums to pictures of yourself passed out in a gutter with a cigarette in one hand and a Vodka Cruiser in the other? Fundamentally, one’s online profile is the exact same as doing all of those ludicrous actions, instead of doing it face-to-face, you’re hiding behind an online profile. In most cases, Adam Smith from down the street will use his full name, Adam Smith, when posting online. In other cases, Adam Smith will hide behind the username ‘coolguy101’ to protect his anonymity and secure himself from ever really being found out who ‘coolguy101’ is.

Online media… in the not too distant past, the online world was a place for anybody and everybody to post whatever was on their mind. It was a time before anonymity, a time before publishing one thing could be taken out of context and blown up into something it most certainly was not. Nowadays, hopping onto the internet is now essentially a lesson in walking on eggshells – “don’t write that”, “don’t click there”, “don’t trust this.” It’s all a matter of keeping your online facade positive to ensure future employers, family members and even the wider public perceive you to be a ‘decent’ or ‘appropriate’ person. High school and primary school was filled with lectures, conversations and underlying messages of protecting your online name and keeping your record clean – we were threatened with everything under the sun, from never getting a job, to your family disowning you… school Internet specialists would literally come up with any scare tactic that they could to ensure the kids (aka the future) would be smart online.

My online presence has generally always been positive, while there are countless photos of me online that I’d rather not be on there (and have untagged myself on Facebook, Instagram and anything else), generally my profile is clean. I have been made aware of friends and friends of friends being involved in online scandals such as leaked intimate images, bullying sagas and online harassment, so with these very ‘full-on’ detrimental activities in mind, I would say my online presence is a positive one. In class, we learnt basically everything that had been affirmed to me anyway, it’s good to see that nothing has changed in my time at school.