Digital Identity

Hello everyone,

    Recently we discussed our Digital Identity in class and I found it very useful for my future careers. We were put into partner groups and asked to discover each other’s digital identity which are typically our social media sites. For the social media sites widely used in the United State, I have to say, I cannot get them legally in China. However, I was curious enough to figure out a way to bypass the firewall and successfully signed up for Facebook and Instagram when I was at middle school. Yet, for some reason, my partner had a hard time looking me up on Google. I thought she might miss-spelled my name or something, but I tried myself, it still didn’t show up. Which made me wonder if there’s something to do with the Chinese government, preventing people looking up each other on the internet. Eventually, I just gave her my name on Facebook and Instagram, so she can look me up in the app instead on Google.

    In China, we usually don’t use social media in a professional way, for us it’s more of just an entertainment. One of the most popular social media apps in China is called WeChat. It’s like everything in one. In my opinion, Facebook is a social media app first, then it developed the function of instant messaging. Differently, most Chinese social media apps came out as instant messaging apps, then developed its social media function.

    During the process of discovering my partner’s digital identity, I think it’s kind of weird – I feel like I’m stalking someone or creeping on someone. Nowadays, it’s so easy to look up information about someone online. You never know the person that looks you up is good or bad, so I think we need to hide certain information about ourselves. It doesn’t mean we completely close down our social media, just get rid of the information relate to privacy issue.

    Then I made a flyer about my digital identity, I think the information is correct but not enough to really discover who I am, because it’s still very limited. I still prefer to meet and hangout with someone to get to know him/her. However, the benefit of digital identity is that you can have a grasp of info about someone in a short period of time, at least the very basic information.

The following is my flyer, check it out!