Curating your online presence

Student wearing headphones and looking at a laptop screen

Summary

Curating your online presence is a worthwhile step to take while you are at University and starting your career. For young people particularly, personal internet usage has spanned broad periods of change within your life and so cleaning up irrelevant information and tightening security is worth considering.

Hi, it’s Aysha again – the Digital Safety Intern with the Digital Skills, Design and Training Team at the University of Edinburgh. Each month I explore different aspects of Digital Safety, Wellbeing and Citizenship. In March 2025 the set theme is Curating your online presence . It explores technical and social aspects of curating yourself on the internet, and we will be offering practical advice for those interested in doing this.

Your online presence is determined by what social media accounts you use, including ones you don’t use but still have and are publicly listed. It is also affected by data-sharing between different accounts, linking together your persona, people you are connected to and places you are connected on the internet. Many of us studying currently at the University have grown up with the internet. Whether you started off with CoolMathsGames, BBC Bitesize or Tumblr, lots of students have been creating digital accounts and building up a digital presence from an early age.

Young people typically use the internet more than any other age group, and we are in the unique situation of using it during our transition from childhood to adulthood. While this holds many benefits like expanding our circles, it also means that our digital presence encompasses a long period of development and change, and might not reflect who we are currently. This is significant to think about at this stage of your life, when you are at university and are potentially starting your career or transitioning to a different type of career. In the backdrop of this, increasing digitalisation means that your online presence is important – to anyone that you want to make an impression on, particularly future employers who might check. Research has shown that up to 70% of employers screen applicants according to their digital footprint.Another crucial reason to clean your digital footprint is keeping your information secure. You want to tie up any loose ends in your data permissions before others identify them and potentially use them to exploit you.

Actions you can take to better curate your online presence

1: Know your online presence before you curate it.

Conduct an online search with your name, looking to see what comes up in the searches and in the images. Find out what social media accounts or websites are linked to your name that you have control over, and then tailor these as appropriate. This might include deleting all of your old and unused accounts, making note of all of the accounts linked to you and removing any sensitive information from sources that come up. The ideal for when you have cleaned your digital footprint is to search your name and come away with zero sensitive personal details and a positive impression of yourself.

2. Check in-app privacy settings.

Do you have a public or private social media profile? Think about why you have either one – is it important for a career goal, for your personal goal in using social media or something else. Consider switching to a private account if this works, as this type of account restricts who can access your data freely online. Most people don’t realise how much information they are sharing with the wider world when they set their social media as public – information which could ultimately be used against you by cybercriminals.

That being said, some social media accounts like professional networks such as LinkedIn should be public profiles. This can increase transparency to future employers, benefit you by growing your network and function as a professional website for you in lieu of having your own website.

3. Review permissions for data-sharing.

Under GDPR legislation, you are in charge of your data. Social media applications often have sections in their settings where you can control your data. For instance, using Instagram as an example, there is a section called Your Information and Permissions that you can access from the Meta Accounts centre. This allows you to control sharing between different Meta platforms and view your search history, download info and access info. It also allows you to investigate information that businesses share with Meta about your activities – for instance, my interactions with a floristry company were recently shared with Instagram. You can manage these Meta-to-Business interactions.

Apps such as TikTok are known for third-party sharing, allowing you to sign in through other platforms in order to decrease the number of accounts you have and let those companies access data from those platforms. This practice, known as Social Login, makes it easier for a virtual profile of you to be built from connections between various platforms you use. This can benefits groups such as producers of virtual advertising and cybercriminals looking to use your data.