Sean Fortney

Introduction

I have always been conscious of my usage of the internet. I originally created my social media accounts when I was in eighth grade, and I have been conscious of what information I have put on these accounts since the beginning. Therefore, I did not believe there to be much personal information about myself on these accounts available to the public. Still, I was curious to see what my data identity was even with the lack of information I had put online. What type of person would a random user of the internet perceive me to be? As it can be seen on the right, a simple Google search of my name does not yield much information. The most information I was instantly able to access was a site called michiganresidentdatabase.com. In order to locate more specific information about myself, I believe searches with more keywords will be necessary.

Images that result from a Google search of my name

Due to my lack of interaction with various social media sites, I found that my data identity showed a somewhat truthful yet incomplete version of myself, and I was interested to see the amount of information I could gather about myself purely online.

Google Search

When I search my name on Google, I am presented with a wide variety of links leading me to all different people also named Sean Fortney. With a bit of sifting, I was able to locate a few different pieces of information about myself. These pieces of information, at the earliest, date back to my junior year of high school (not including my social media accounts). Some of the links led me to fond memories of the past. I was able to find my old Hudl page from when I played high school football at Brother Rice. However, some led me to some less pleasant memories such as my grandfather's obituary from 2018. However, what these two pieces of information do have in common is that they do not tell one much information about myself, especially since they are both from years in the past. In order to get more specific information about myself, I looked to my various social media accounts to see how I had presented myself.

Social Media

When I first created my social media accounts, I posted on them quite often. Now, I could go back about a year and a half since my last personal social media post. I examined when this change occurred, why it occurred, and how the change impacted how others may think of me through these accounts. I have four publicly accessible social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn). Each of these accounts present myself in a different way, yet even together they do not paint a full picture of who I consider myself to be. Below, I will go through each account, how my usage on that account has changed through the years, and how this change has impacted my online persona.

Facebook

If I were to choose one social media site to represent myself, I would choose Facebook, yet Facebook is the site which I have posted the least on. Below, I will go through why less posting has actually led to a more well-rounded presentation of myself.

I first signed up for Facebook in 2013, and my usage of the site has been consistent ever since. I have never posted anything of my own. If you go to my page, it is completely filled by photos of myself posted by others, mostly my family and friends. The reason this has presented a more true version of myself is because I have allowed others to post photos of myself rather than myself only posting photos that I might think are adequate to be on social media. The account is less about trying to make myself look good, but more about highlighting what is important to myself - family and friends. In the future, I doubt I will post more, especially with how I have seen other users interact with each other on the platform's feed which is filled with nasty political arguments. These arguments inevitably lead to presenting yourself in a poor light, and I do not plan on presenting myself online again in this way as I once did on Twitter.

Twitter

I created my Twitter account about the same time as my Facebook account. Unlike my Facebook account, I was very active on my Twitter account. I would tweet about things I thought were funny and about things I enjoyed such as sports. Overall, I presented a pretty normal version of myself. Fast-forward to today, and I have not tweeted in nearly three years. My Twitter mainly consists of retweets of other's posts. My page has now become more of a place for myself to share things I like or might agree with while reading, but I do not post any original content. What changed?

A screenshot of my Instagram Account

First, I grew older and decided that social media needs to be treated with a great amount of caution as it can have a great amount of influence on your future career prospects through potential employers viewing your pages. I decided it was best to have a limited presence. Second and more importantly, I had a bad experience interacting with another Twitter user many years ago. During high school, I got into a Twitter argument with a student from a neighboring school online about politics. Although the argument did not become overly heated, I recall someone approaching me about it in school in the following days. This became a turning point in my social media usage because I did not want my online presence to impact how people might actually view me in real life. Ever since this incident, I have seldom posted on social media, which I believe to have improved my ability to successfully use it without consequence.

Instagram and LinkedIn

The two other social media accounts that I own are an Instagram and LinkedIn account. Overall, these two accounts tell one very little about myself. On Instagram (shown on right), I have a private account, so I can control to whom I present this online identity. As seen, there is essentially no information available to people who I do not allow to follow the account. Even if one can view the account, there is very little information available. I only have about 20 posts, I untag myself from many of the photos I am tagged in, and my biography is very limited. On LinkedIn, the only additional information one can acquire are the places I have worked in the past. The account is purely for professional purposes, so there is minimal personal information about myself.

Conclusion

Despite the limited information about myself on social media sites, I think one is able to get a decent idea of what kind of person I am. The amount of information available is also dependent on the information for which someone is searching.