Seen by Everyone for Your Whole Life Forever

As a middle school teacher, I feel like I spend more time on my students' social-emotional concerns than I do on actually teaching about history. I have students in my room every day, upset about something happening in their lives. Nine times out of ten, whatever is upsetting them has some connection to the internet. Someone said something in a group chat that turned it into a group argument. My student posted something "private" that was shared over and over again. In every case, my student will seem baffled that something they thought wouldn't be shared was shared. "Of course it was shared!" I want to shout. But I don't. Or I try not to. I usually tell them something like, "Assume that everything you post or share will be seen by everyone for your whole life forever."

When I got a Facebook account, I was in college. At the time, Facebook was only for college students. Oh what a simple time it was. Over ten years later, I'm adding to my digital tattoo every day, especially on Facebook. I share many things every day but post my own updates infrequently. To better understand how others see me via my digital tattoo, I scrolled through some of my posts and shares. I saw many reoccurring themes.

Using Adobe Stock Images, I created a collage of images that represent those things:

Collage created by the author

I learned that on Facebook I post about my dog more than I post about anything else, with funny things my students say coming in a close second. I share political posts a lot, but I'm usually only sharing things that already reflect my beliefs to an audience that mostly agrees with my beliefs. On my Instagram account, okay I'm still mostly posting about my dog. Pictures from my life in Chicago come in third place while pictures of my vegetarian creations come in second.

Our digital tattoos are like so many physical tattoos. You start with something small and then keep adding to it until you have something covering half your body. For the most part, I think it's interesting to see what my friends and family are posting, not only because these things are often thought provoking but also because it tells me a little more about who they are and how they want to be viewed by others. Sometimes, though, this idea of being connected online can seem a little too extreme for me. For example, in this article "From the Designers of Fitbit, a Digital Tattoo Implanted Under Your Skin" Mark Wilson explains Project Underskin, "a concept for a smart digital tattoo which would be implanted in your hand and interact with everything you touch. In can unlock your front door, trade data with a handshake, or even tell you if you have low blood sugar." It's possible that one of my students will become a teacher someday, too. Maybe he/she will have students walking into the classroom every morning, complaining that they shared too much via handshake!

Our digital tattoos, like our real tattoos, are forever. Whatever we share will follow us wherever we go and will give others an idea of who we are and what we believe. They're here to stay. And like our real tattoos, they tend to get larger and more detailed over time.