Drew's 6th Blog Post

“Google results for… Drew Camp”

         I remember when I was a little kid my friends and I would Google our names just to see what would pop up. Most of the times the results would yield some real estate agent with the same name promoting his website, but nowadays it is a little different. I had an idea of what this assignment was going to look like because I have never had any of my social media accounts set to private so all of my pictures that I have posted to social media can be found.

An actual picture of me looking at myself on the internet

GOOGLE

          The first thing I did was simply type “Drew Camp” into the Google search bar. The first result that popped up was Facebook profiles with the name Drew Camp. My profile was the first one that showed up after clicking the link, followed by a myriad of other Drews. Most of the other results on the first page of Google were of other Drew Camps, most of them are college athletes with profiles on their respective college athletics websites. The first result that linked directly to me was my profile on the Fishing League Worldwide (FLW) website. Since I am apart of the College fishing team at CNU, I am a member of FLW and I have a profile there. Under that profile it just says my name, hometown, college, and has a picture of me from one of the tournaments. This is not a lot of information, but it does give my face, hometown, and age.

          The last result on the first page of Google is a link to my Instagram account (@fishboy_13). Since my account is public, all of my pictures are available to see to anyone (more about Instagram later).  One thing I found interesting was as I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and saw the ‘suggested search’ tabs where “Drew Camp fishing” popped up. I assumed this would yield more results about me, so I clicked on it and my assumptions were right.

          Under “drew camp fishing” I found a ton of images, videos, and info about me, mostly from my past. I used to have a blog when that was more popular (fishtailsbydrew.blogspot.com) and I used to post up fishing reports for my area. I posted a lot of pictures on this blog, but they are also pictures that could be found on my Instagram and Facebook. None of these pictures are bad per say so I don’t really care that they are on there.

          Next, I used Google Images to search for Drew Camp. As I scrolled through the random pictures of other Drew Camps a picture of me would occasionally pop up. Most of these pictures were fishing ones from either articles I had written for magazines, from my blog, advertisements I did for companies, or from my Facebook. Once again, all of the pictures I found through the google search were pictures that I willingly posted and have no problem with other people seeing.

FACEBOOK/ INSTAGRAM

          Both my Facebook and Instagram pages have been public since I made them in high school. On my Instagram it is mostly pictures of fishing, but I do have some pictures of family and friends. The information I was able to find through my Instagram was: Birthday, age, hometown, college, and family members.

          Facebook was much of the same information. I am tagged in a lot of pictures with family members so the images on Facebook are a little more personal than the ones I found through the Google search or Instagram. I still do not mind these pictures though, and I don’t really care if other people see them. I couldn’t find any personal information that I am worried about other people accessing through Facebook or Instagram.

TWITTER

          Twitter is the social media site that I was most worried about. In high school I had a twitter account that I used actively as a typical high schooler. When I think back to that account, I remember watching what I tweeted, making sure I did not retweet or tweet any profanity or salacious images. After typing in Drew Camp into the Twitter search, I found my old account under the account I use currently. The account is public so I could scroll through my high school years, looking at all of the tweets and retweets. There were a lot of tweets that made me cringe now as an adult, but luckily there was not anything too serious. I had never forgotten about that account, but I’m not sure why I never deleted it. This was really a wakeup call that I should probably delete this account because I’ll be better off in the long run.

          My new account I made right before I came here to CNU. I am much less active on this account besides a few retweets here and there, but nothing serious. This account is probably my most secure, and I think after this class I’m going to switch this account to ‘private’ because I do not really use this account to gain followers, I just use it for sports updates and a good meme or two.

SUMMARY:

          Overall, most of the information I was able to find on myself was information I already knew was out there. I did not find any real personal information, just the general stuff like birthday, age, and hometown. Sometimes I think about what the line is between typical information on the internet and personal information. I guess growing up in the digital age and making countless profiles for websites and social media sites, I never thought of my age, birth date, and pictures as being personal information. But, when I talk to someone older like my parents or grandparents, they are always hesitant of giving even information like that up.

          Marwick and Boyd’s article titled “Networked Privacy” talks about how privacy in digital spaces has changed for teenagers especially, and how social norms now dictate what how internet privacy works. The article says that “A networked model of privacy contradicts many of the paternalistic discourses about young people that exist today. When privacy models are individual and technology-focused, the onus is placed on teens, their guardians, or the technology itself to control the flow of data. If a teenager makes digital content available, there is an assumption that privacy no longer matters (2014).” This further proves my assumption that growing up in the digital age I never thought twice about adding personal information to my profiles, because everyone I knew also did the same thing.

References:

Marwick, A. E. & Boyd, D. (2014). Networked privacy: How teenagers negotiate context in social            media. New Media & Society. Vol. 16(7). pp.1051- 1067.