Difference between revisions of "Caroline Taketa"

Revision as of 17:16, 5 March 2021

I was an early traveler on the social media train, joining many social media platforms in 2012. Over the next six or so years, I used these platforms heavily, uploading pictures, posting updates, and providing my social media networks with frequent updates on my life. But as I turned 18, I hit a pivotal realization in my life. Confused, depressed, and desperate for something to change, I withdrew myself from all forms of social media. While my physical accounts still existed, they sat idle, gathering dust on the relevant information that could be gathered on my personal identity.

While my online data presence articulates bits and pieces of my identity, I believe that the shift in my relationship with and perspective of social media greatly contributed to the incomplete snapshot of my online data identity and the authenticity behind the information available about me online.

Search Process

DuckDuckGo's suggested search queries when attempting to search for "Caroline Taketa"

While I accumulated a moderate amount of data (both past & present, true & false, and complete & incomplete) on myself, I must highlight my surprise regarding the vast quantity of information I found on individuals other than myself. With a unique sir name such as “Taketa”, I assumed that data would be fairly specialized towards my own specific identity. However, I believe the combination of my common first name and unique last name led to such diverse search results.

As Google breaks down a search query, phrases are broken down into individual words. These words are then assessed for potential spelling mistakes and alternative interpretations ^[1]. So, as I searched for “Caroline Taketa”, Google instantly assessed the possibility that “Caroline” was misspelled and actually intended to be either “Carolyn” or “Carol”. Additionally, “Taketa” was assessed as “Takata”, “Takeda”, “Takoua”, and “Take” (among several other variations). This combination of a common first name with an uncommon last name left room for hundreds of thousands of possible variations of my search query phrase, and thus, hundreds of thousands of search results on data that had nothing to do with me.

I believe this algorithmic flaw is a possible reason for the variety of information that can be found when searching “Caroline Taketa”. Even data brokers and privacy-protected search engines like DuckDuckGo display significant inconsistencies in showing results that relate directly to me. For example, when searching "Caroline Taketa" on DuckDuckGo, only 8 of the first 30 results were specifically related to my individual identity, despite the company’s avoidance of autocorrecting search queries and dedication to supplying "very exact" results.^[2] And while significant information can still be gathered–such as my home phone number, address, social media profiles, some relatives, etc.–there is also a significant amount of misinformation that is associated with such searches. Most commonly, these services listed relatives of mine that I am not at all related to as well as search results on individuals that have similar names to mine, but are not me.

My Social Media & Online Identity

My "Favorites" listed on my Facebook page via Google incognito search

Past Usage

My relationship with social media began as a preteen when I first realized that lying about your birthday provided easy access around the age requirement of many social media platforms. I dove directly into Facebook, quickly following with my creation of profiles on Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Obsessed with creating a ‘perfect’ social media profile, I filled up each platform with a combination of hobbies, likes, and interests that hardly represented any truth of my actual identity. My 12- to 13-year-old self prioritized a list of “Favorites” composed of things I believed I should like, rather than things I actually did like.

But I mustn’t completely discredit my young self. The more “factual” information provided on me did speak to many aspects of who I was when I originally created these accounts. Accurate details about my past athletic, educational, philanthropic, and travel endeavors could be found on these sites. However, outside these areas, data displayed in my profiles showed a consistent pattern of falsity. While some of this inaccuracy can be attributed to my own faults of listing hobbies, interests, and other activities that I had no real interest in, I believe that a great quantity of the misinformation stems from incorrect conclusions such social media algorithms made about my identity. Look specifically at 'The Jacks' listed under my favorite music on Facebook. While I do follow the band’s page, I have never interacted with it nor listed the band in the “likes” on my actual Facebook account. However, due to the fact that I follow the band’s page and the connection between the band’s members and my own hometown (The Jacks members grew up in the same hometown as I), Facebook assumed that The Jacks would be a band that I consider one of my favorites in music.

Present Usage

Caroline Taketa's LinkedIn page via Google Incognito search

With the exponential growth of social media and online networks in the professional world, it has become virtually impossible to not present your educational and professional identities online. In search inquiries of "Caroline Taketa" on both Google incognito mode and DuckDuckGo, the first results revolve entirely around my identity as a student and young professional. My LinkedIn and WayUp profiles displayed the same information that I myself had inputted in my profiles. Data on my hometown location, university, future career aspirations, past work experience, and even my current hobbies appeared on these pages.

My present usage of social media provided an accurate identity identical to the one listed on my resume. It spoke of my high value of education, experience, and surface-level aspirations of my career. But this identity was nothing more than that: surface-level. The information gathered on these sites spoke about as much to me as a person as an AI-resume scanner could concur. This identity of mine was my application without an interview; it was merely the tip of the iceberg. It failed to represent me as a complete version of myself.

The Disconnect

My unplugging of social media stemmed from an internal psychological spiral. As I sculpted a ‘perfect’ social media identity, I lost touch with who I was in the physical world. If I could attribute my feeling to words, it would mirror those of philosopher Luciano Floridi: “The increasing re-ontologization of artefacts and of whole (social) environments suggests that soon it will be difficult to understand what life was like in predigital times and, in the near future, the very distinction between online and offline will become blurred and then disappear.”^[3] What I was unaware of is just how quickly this divide would disappear.

Not even a decade after beginning social media, I left it. The temporary relief of escaping the struggles of a physical world turned into a chronic anxiety of my identity in the digital one. An image of myself was being painted not only online, but in the physical minds of every individual my profiles encountered. As social media sculpted its depiction of my identity, it was erasing anything and everything I knew about who I was. Feeling confused and alone, I decided that in order to find myself, I must prioritize being present in the physical world rather than the digital one. I needed to forget about the image social media painted of me and begin painting my own.

Conclusion

Image of physical and digital hands touching representing the collision of the digital and physical worlds^[4]

While my online data presence represents a part of my identity it fails to encapture any sort of complete picture of the person I am. With an expectation of my educational and professional identities whose online presence has essentially become required in the recruitment and hiring process, my data identity embodies versions and phases of my past self; versions and phases that were merely the foundation for which I have built my present self and identity upon.

However, this being said, it is vital to be aware of the depiction that is present of myself online and on social media. While those who know me in the physical world understand the disconnect between my data identity and true identity, any person around the world with access to my name and the internet can find me and thus formulate a picture of who they believe me to be based on my online presence. And as Floridi suggested, the growing connection between the physical and digital worlds will soon, if not already, make distinguishing what is true online and what is false increasingly more difficult. Your digital identity will soon become the identity people believe you to hold in the real world, despite the incompleteness and inaccuracy of the identity in general.

While I hold new concerns over the perception of my online identity, it is unclear whether or not this concern is great enough to affect my current relationship with social media. Ever since deciding to keep social media at an arm's length, I have been able to formulate a better idea of who I am as a person, an image I fear will blur if I become more invested in social media and my online identity again.

References

1. ↑ Google. “Search Algorithms: How Search Algorithms Work: Meaning of Your Query.” Retrieved February 19, 2021.
2. ↑ DuckDuckGo. "Results: Number of Results", DuckDuckGo Help Pages. Retrieved February 19, 2021.
3. ↑ Floridi, Luciano. (2010). “Ethics after the Information Revolution”. The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. Cambridge University Press.
4. ↑ Jesuthasan, Maureen. (12 April 2018). "The human side of digital transformation: Shaping consumer demand with business capabilities". West Monroe. Retrieved February 19, 2021.