Personal vs. Professional Digital Identity

Personal and professional approaches to digital identity can affect how people use social media because the audience, purpose, and consequences are often different. Personal digital identity tends to be more casual and reflects things like hobbies, relationships, humour, interests, and opinions. Professional digital identity is usually more intentional. People may think more carefully about how they present themselves because employers, coworkers, instructors, or professional contacts could be part of the audience.

One of the biggest issues is that these identities are becoming harder to separate. Someone might use Instagram or TikTok personally and LinkedIn professionally, but that does not necessarily mean the two identities stay completely separate. A coworker or employer can still find a personal account, and friends can tag someone in posts or photos that become part of their online presence. Stoller (2016) describes digital identity as the “footprint” people leave on the web, which shows how online identity is built from more than just the information we intentionally put on professional profiles.

This also connects to Boyd’s (2012) discussion of networked privacy. Boyd explains that online information can be persistent, searchable, replicable, and easily shared. Because of this, privacy is not completely controlled by the person who originally posted the information. Even if an account is private, someone else could screenshot a post, share a photo, or tag the person in something they did not intend a professional audience to see.

I think this becomes especially important for university students because this is often the point where personal social media use starts overlapping with professional life. A student might have years of casual posts online before they begin applying for jobs or networking professionally. At that point, they may become more aware of old posts, usernames, photos, or comments that do not match the image they want to present professionally.

At the same time, I do not think professional identity needs to mean removing all personality from social media. Personal interests and experiences can actually make professional connections feel more genuine. The challenge is deciding what parts of your personal identity you are comfortable having connected to your professional identity and understanding that online audiences can overlap more easily than we sometimes expect.

References

Boyd, D. (2012). Networked privacy. Surveillance & Society, 10(3/4), 348–350. https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/networked/networked

University of Derby. (2016, November 25). Eric Stoller – What is digital identity? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0RryRbJza0