What is a digital identity?

A digital identity is the congregation of a person’s online presence, and how this presence is viewed by the rest of world online. Building your social identity is a very important step in 2020 as everything seems to be moving to the digital realms. You can have a positive digital identity by sharing meaningful content and providing positive feedback to the people you follow. Contrary to that, you could build a negative digital identity by engaging in hateful commentary and promoting/providing negative content on the web.

How do personal versus professional approaches to digital identity affect social media use?

There are many uses for social media but there are two main ones that I will elaborate on. The first use for social media is for leisure. People use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like for interacting with friends, sharing videos, and playing games. Contrary to this, social media can be used to create a professional personal identity. For this, users look to platforms such as LinkedIn where the individual can showcase their professional skills and achievements in an online resume. These platforms make it much easier for business owners to connect with potential employees who are perfect for their open positions. It also gives employers the ability to search for the exact skills they are looking for in a worker and allow these connections to be made much more efficiently.

How do digital identities converge in networked publics – what are the impacts and/or benefits?

The net as a whole has allowed humans to communicate and access information at a profound rate which has come with some major benefits but also some major drawbacks. Some of these benefits include the ability to collaborate on projects from anywhere in the world. Someone in China and someone in Sweden could be working on the same engineering project together by collaborating using Google Docs. Another benefit is the ease of news transmission and the ability for everyday individuals to speak up on these news topics. It is amazing that a normal individual has the ability to vocalize their opinion on an issue and have the potential to reach the whole world with their idea. The main drawbacks of digital identities in networked public is the mass amount of negativity. On Twitter and Reddit especially, the platforms allow users to create anonymous accounts which is a serious problem. Users with an anonymous profile are able to say whatever they want to say to people without tarnishing their biological identity. There is no accountability with these people and lots of the time, these hateful anonymous accounts are constricting social platforms by weeding out the positive and beneficial material. If social media companies would exile anonymous accounts and try to alleviate some of the negativity, social networks would be exponentially more beneficial to the acceleration and progression of humanity.