Digital Tattoos
Revisiting the concept of digital tattoos this week got me thinking about my social media accounts floating out there in cyberspace. When I first did a digital mine I was glad to learn my dormant social media accounts were not readily available. I know this to be even more true as I am in the home stretch of my first year teaching sixth grade and have not been questioned by my students about my social media accounts. That being said, even though I am no longer active on my Facebook and Instagram accounts and quite frankly have to reset my passwords in order to access them, they are still out there.
Spring Cleaning
I checked out an infographic titled Social Media Spring Cleaning. This infographic gives 8 suggestions about how to go through your social media accounts and make them either the most productive for your business or safest in terms of personal accounts. I was curious what my privacy settings are currently set and as and this felt like the push I needed to finally just delete my social media accounts. As I anticipate the birth of my second child this summer and reflect on the absence of social media in my current life, I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to move on from the Facebook and Instagram stages of my life.
How private are my accounts currently?
I was pleased to find Facebook has a privacy walk through built into their account that made it very simple to see what information is available publicly and what is only stored for Facebook and me to see. There were a few areas that surprised me as being public such as my birthday and hometown. Otherwise I was pretty comfortable with the current settings.
With Facebook and Instagram both being Meta companies I was able to access my Instagram privacy settings directly from Facebook and found them to be very similar.
So Long, Farewell
It was much easier to completely delete my Facebook than my Instagram account. I ended up deactivating and not deleting my Instagram account. I had much few posts and it was even harder to find my Instagram account, so I felt okay about just deactivating. All in all I feel a strange sense of relief changing my digital tattoo today. I am hopeful to continue feeling this way as time goes on. I must also share that I did keep my professional Twitter account to connect with other educators and post about my students.
This is great that you felt relief in deleting your accounts. It sounds like Facebook lays things out for you to be able to follow step by step to delete your account. I have a Facebook and Instagram and have not yet thought about deleting them. I still find the value in them with connecting to far away family and friends. It is neat to hear the other perspective though.
ReplyDeleteGood for you! I don't feel the pull that I once did to post every aspect of my life and I don't check my social media accounts as much as I used to but the thought of deleting them outright is beyond my scope right now! It's nice to hear you are relieved about dele yours- this gives me a little comfort knowing it may be a positive someday.
ReplyDeleteI also did a privacy check this week and was pleased to see how easy it was to change my settings. While I do not post on my accounts regularly, I am checking them quite frequently. I personally don't think I can take that next step like you did and delete them, I do still like having my accounts to see what my family and friends are up to.
ReplyDelete