How to Curate Your Kid’s Digital Footprint For Maximum Benefits

Our previous post detailed WHY having a positive digital footprint, one that you’re completely in charge of, can be a good thing. It gives your applications an edge, can help you showcase your talents in a meaningful way and acts as a handy source for those who want a quick glance at what you bring to the table.

This week, let’s get into that all-important HOW. What are the steps your kid can take to get all the benefits of a healthy online presence without oversharing? Let’s find out.

First, let’s talk about balance

Curating your digital footprint means needing to know what you put out there but, equally importantly, withholding some information, too.

To stay on the safer side, consider sharing nothing at all till your kid is old enough to know what parts of them they want to share, permanently. The tips that follow are a blend of how to get the right stuff in the public eye while still having a lot that only the closest family and friends can access.

The Active and the Passive

To truly make this work for you, it’s important to note the two different kinds of footprints you’re leaving behind:

• The Active Footprint is made up of data that’s collected when you make deliberate choices. Accepting cookies from websites you visit, signing up for newsletters and, of course, posting anything from a tweet to an Instagram reel all come under this umbrella.
• The Passive Footprint, on the other hand, is made up of information that you aren’t expressly volunteering. You don’t DIRECTLY add to this stream of data, but your actions on the Internet are recorded as part of it. For example, websites that track your location add that data to your passive footprint. Similarly, your search history, the likes you leave on posts and cookies that are installed without your permission or knowledge all fall under this category.

To make sure your child is as safe as possible, it’s important to be aware of the Passive Footprint that is being generated even without any apparent action. A simple way to combat some of this info from being collected without your knowledge is to use browsers and web tools that have been developed for that exact reason. Tor, DuckDuckGo and even iOS’s default Safari are good places to start, but the sudden rush to preserve privacy has resulted in several such options that you can pick from.

Keep your public profiles updated

Create and share portfolios of your work at regular intervals. Anyone giving you a quick search will find a regularly updated account a lot more promising than something that hasn’t been opened in years.

There are several platforms that do the job, starting from Adobe Portfolio that can be customized depending on what you want to put out, Behance for the artists and Wordpress or Wix for copy-based work.

Use a junk email account

When a dubious online form requires an email ID or when you’re signing up for a newsletter that you’d rather not have attached to your online persona, it’s often easiest to have a secondary email ID ready.

Not everything you do needs to have an audience, so having a separate account that isn’t linked to your name can reduce that.

Keep tabs on the accounts you create

It’s becoming easier and easier to sign up to different websites and online services. Simultaneously, it’s getting easier and easier to completely lose count of how many such accounts you have to your name.

Every time you register for something, make note of it.

Keep this list updated and systematically delete your page from websites you don’t use anymore. It’s always a good thing to know what information you’ve volunteered at what point, but with social media accounts this could help in a much more serious way.

Having old photos and messages of yourself up without even realising it could hurt you in the long run. Pocket is one of several such extensions that does the tracking for you. With two clicks, you can add your newest account to the list and track all your accounts similarly.

Consider a Virtual Private Network

The worst kind of digital footprint is one that you haven’t consented to publishing. VPNs, or Virtual Private Network, do a great job of minimizing that risk. Once installed, it makes it much easier for you to separate your real identity from your online activity.

They’re all the rage now (an added advantage is that you can access streaming sites that aren’t yet available in your country!), so some options that you could start with are NordVPN, ExpressVPN and Secure VPN.

A Final Measure

Looking yourself up on various search engines can help as a teaching tool. Of course, once something is out there, it’s already too late, but it can keep you from repeating mistakes.

So there you have it! A handy guide on how to use our collective lack of privacy to your advantage. Oh well!