Oversharing and your digital footprint

What is oversharing? Listen to some teenagers talk about it in this video.

Instructions

Do the preparation task first. Then watch the video and do the exercises. Remember you can read the transcript at any time.

Transcript

The idea of, you know, posting and have a lot of people see it can definitely be kind of scary.

You know, if you're a teenager, you're going to make bad decisions sometimes.

They can screenshot it, they can do so many things to save that and they can edit it in ways that you won't want them to.

Whether or not you think it'll go away, it's there. Anything you post online, you're stuck with.

Oversharing to me is … putting too much of your personal life in front of a wide audience of people.

Posting something for the sake of showing that you're there and maybe not because you're actually having that great of a time.

Posting about things that people don't necessarily think are significant, but they're just kind of posting to be posting.

What you share and how often you share is going to affect the way that somebody views you. Just because I'm gonna post all the time, that doesn't mean that you're going to get all the attention. That doesn't mean that everybody's gonna like you.

For example, people have, like, finstas where they … or spam accounts where they just, like, post random stuff and sometimes they get too personal with what … with what they're talking about on there.

Things that are meant to be texted one-to-one, people will tend to post online so 50 other people can see their plans for tomorrow or the next weekend. You could be doing something, like, that could potentially endanger yourself by making your account public and saying too much about where you live or who you are.

When I'm in, like, a cool location, and I want to show everybody where I am, but most of the time I'll just tag where I am on like a Snapchat story so people can know.

So once you put something online, it can be there forever because people might take screenshots, they might record it, they might save it.

I don't think, I don't think people don't realise that it's going to be there forever. I think they just don't care. A lot of people have this mentality of, like, 'What I'm doing is very insignificant. Why is anyone gonna care about this?'

You should be cautious of what you post. You'll post your pictures and think, like, 'OK, nobody, nobody's seeing me, nobody's screenshotted me, nobody doing nothing', because people are doing that. You're just not gonna know.

Your Snapchats, despite the fact that they only last, I don't know, four to eight seconds, they're still there. Your Instagram stories that go away after 24 hours, they're still there.

Anything that is posted, anything that's up, no matter what happens, even if you leave it up for a minute and take it down, it's there as soon as you put it up there.

No one's going to scrutinise everything that you say the same way that you might.

You are not obliged to post every second of your life in order to please what you might seem is the majority of people. So when you feel like you have to post all the time, when you feel like you have to do this in order to get fame and attention, you don't. It's not your job.

That's something you always have to be thinking about: what do you want people to remember you on social media as?

© Common Sense

Discussion

Do some people post too often and share too much personal information? What do you do to stay safe on social media?

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Average: 4.5 (4 votes)
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Comments

Profile picture for user bookishgirl

Submitted by bookishgirl on Thu, 07/28/2022 - 12:51

I agree with the kids. I use Instagram and Pinterest and I only share some content related to my hobbies like movies, series and books. No personal content. But I share some personal info in private stories which are open to only the people I added to my close friends. So I have a question: can stalkers see my private stories via some apps?? Please answer, I'll go then!!
Profile picture for user Andrii

Submitted by Andrii on Tue, 07/13/2021 - 18:03

I don't know any people that post too much personal information. In social media, I never post personal information. I just post some of my gameplay and that's all.

Submitted by meli25 on Tue, 04/06/2021 - 16:00

To me some people post too much about their personal life, specially the influencers; it can happen that these people post too much when they are on holiday or at home, so somebody can catch information about where they live or about where they go on holiday, usually these people are out of mind. So, I think that influencers must pay attention to their blogs. To stay safe on social media I, above all, have private account and I accept only people I know.I usually post photos suitable to my age and I don’t post all the time.

Submitted by Hadam12 on Thu, 03/18/2021 - 17:30

Sometimes the people dont recognize that they post a lot personal informations. It can be dangerous if you share your whole life.Take care of what you share with the world.

Submitted by Mary_Ryzhowa on Wed, 10/14/2020 - 12:26

As for me, I think that now only bloggers posts too much personal informations. The other people do posts rarely and share only perfect photos or some important and interesting news. Personaly, I do a lot of posts about books also I share my opinion about something and sometimes tell stories from my life

Submitted by cookiepg on Thu, 08/27/2020 - 03:01

I like this teen voises

Submitted by Pasta on Sun, 05/31/2020 - 19:54

Oversharing is a big problem in our modern life.Sometimes people especially teens are incautious in sharing and publishing . Even if you think , you have a private account , it doesn't mean your information will be there forever. I have my own experience, and I'm sorry to people , who were mentally damaged by bullying on social medias.Everyday I see how my classmates bully the wickest students, because of the photo they made 5 years ago.These people are disgusting!!!!Out digital footprint will be here forever, even this comment.

Submitted by Egor on Wed, 05/13/2020 - 09:44

I think that digital security is an important topic for every person who is going to or is already on the Internet. Especially children who put everything on the Internet, they first need to explain what can be done on the Internet and what is not needed. After all, anyone can look at the page of a child and understand what he is doing now or is going to.

Submitted by hermione123 on Tue, 03/09/2021 - 09:22

yeah, you hit the nail on the head. some people just post everything online because maybe they're not aware of the benifit and the consequence of posting online.

In reply to by Egor

Profile picture for user KemoF

Submitted by KemoF on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 13:48

"Oversharing by definition is sharing more than necessary details about one's personal life to an inappropriate audience. I believe that this is a habit, a habit that not only hurts someone's social image but has the potential to destroy the career and socio-economic status." I wonder how many guys are aware of this.

Submitted by hermione123 on Tue, 03/09/2021 - 09:10

well, I guess not many teens are aware of that definition. because the fact is there are some teens that still sharing their personal life too often. i think most of them don't know about oversharing or maybe they just don't care. yeah, i also wonder how much number of teens that are aware of oversharing.

In reply to by KemoF

Profile picture for user samoiset

Submitted by samoiset on Sat, 01/11/2020 - 11:27

thank you veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy much
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