'No photos please' by Paul Kelly

For this year’s Educa Online Berlin conference we [Marga and Steve] were asked to comment on one of the issues that we identified for the Digital Identity symposium that we called ‘Growing up Public’.

Our responses are repeated here:

Q. What impact do you  expect on young people’s lives from  ‘growing up in public’?

A. When we [Rhizome project] use the phrase ‘growing up in public’ we refer to the increased visibility that many young people have and will continue to experience throughout their lifetime engagement with social media. The Internet is now a space dominated by the connections between individuals and their ability to [re]use and create rich content – something that now lies within everyone’s grasp, not just that of the technically and technologically privileged. This coupled with the diversification of devices we [people] use to access Internet within a pervasive always connected environment mean that we now have a multiplicity of what Holland (1998) might call ‘spaces of authoring’ or self-fashioning.

One of the main impacts that we are interested in, that results from this increased level of life exposure via the Internet, is the ongoing work that is required in the construction of digital identities. How do young people manage and maintain coherent and purposeful digital identities when public and private boundaries are often blurred and the tools for controlling digital histories are lacking. Real issues emerge from the complexities of this process within for example the world of job seeking and active engagement in online communities of practice.

Q. How can we mitigate the risks? Do we need more rules, limitations or more control?

A. Among the solutions to help citizens to manage their digital identities, there are three that interest us as educators, parents and citizens. The first is awareness raising to increase young people’s digital identity literacy. By this I mean the ability of individuals to manage their digital identity in an efficient manner in accordance with their changing life goals. I am particularly interested in the responsibility and accountability parents and guardians have towards the digital identity of their children, especially when they have not started to craft their own digital identity spaces. Here, specific actions to support parents and children in acquiring digital identity literacies are lacking. Secondly, in the area of technology, we need to see improvements in the level of granularity and access control to user generated content. Individuals need to be empowered to decide what they share, with whom and for how long this is required. The standard three level sharing policy – with all, with my friends and with my family – is not sufficient. Finally, we need to be able to assert our right to control user-generated content about ourselves. By developing the tools and processes to discover and delete undesired persistent content we should all have the ability to remove those digital traces that might impact negatively our lives.

Q. Should parents be responsible for their children activities on the web?

A. Parents should be responsible for their children’s education in matters related to digital identity literacy, helping them to gain awareness about the extent of their digital personas and support them in the crafting of their digital selves – for example by discussing with them at the relevant age (each has different needs) about: the extent of their digital identity, who contributes to it, the reach of their activities within the different social networks and communities they participate in, the persistence of their digital traces and their short, medium, long term impact, the creation of alternative digital selves, how to track unwanted information about themselves, digital identity etiquette, and awareness about cyber security and identity threats.

Q. Is there any recommendation from your side, on how to handle the own presence in online communities or on websites?

A. This is an area that the Rhizome project (http://www.rhizomeproject.org) is currently investigating using a particular methodology based on identifying successful practices through the production of a set of design patterns for digital identity. This is an approach that seeks to empower individuals to design their own solutions to the problems they encounter when constructing and managing their digital identity, be it within online communities or operating in a professional work-based setting. In terms of recommendations then these will vary according to the age and the purpose of the subject. For us, a useful framework to understand digital identity management could be ordered around the following processes: increase your awareness of your digital self, craft a home for your online presence, claim the trusted sources relating to your digital persona, aggregate sources and traces of your digital selves for specific purposes such job-seeking, compartimentalise and protect the digital selves you don’t want to be exposed to all via the Internet, for example maintaining the professional-personal divide.

Margarita Perez-Garcia and Steven Warburton