In the past week, we were fortunate enough to have a guest speaker by the name of Jesse Miller come into class and provide us with a presentation on the use of social media and also how we can manage our digital footprint.  To begin with, I will touch on the usage of social media.  When Jesse began talking, he referenced how social media has over years began to really take over our lives.  We wake up in the morning and a lot of us, the first thing we do is check our social media before our feet even touch the floor.  The world we live in now is surrounded by social media and how active we are on that media.  Since social media really first hit the scene with Facebook, humans instead of filling free time with doing activities, seeing friends, etc. decide to instead, spend our free time interacting and using social media.

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In the later half of the presentation, Jesse mentioned about the effect that our digital footprint has on us.  Your digital footprint is essentially what information exists about you on the internet as a result of our online activity.  Prior to class, I searched myself as part of the pre-class exercises, and didn’t find much outside of the ordinary.  Several articles about lacrosse, my university player profile, a couple of news articles and releases from sports and community work.  But what I didn’t think of particularly was my social media usage and how that contributes to my digital footprint as well.  As Jesse continued to elaborate, I began to think more so about how involved I was with social media and what it was doing for me.  The more Jesse spoke and the more I tuned into what was being said again, I realized that by being on social media and scrolling just to scroll, I was feeding into this wasted time when I could be out doing so much more.  This then brought me into doing some further research into the topic; is social media taking over our lives.  I was brought across a video by Bailey Parnell from Ryerson University where she discusses if social media is hurting our mental health.  After watching this video, she raises some very valid points and we shouldn’t be dependent on social media but here we are, our usage of it all is increasing.  As I reflect, I believe at times social media has hurt my mental health.  For example, while away at university my first few years, I found myself constantly searching to see what people were doing which ultimately led me to being very homesick.  Often times, students do not know that the bad picture of them posted on Instagram will be able to be found by a potential future employer at some point in time. Social media has its upsides but it also comes with downs as well, the best thing we as educators can do is ensure our students know about their digital footprints and recognize what they are doing online will stick with them as well.