Digital Tattoos: "I am Adam Wolf" and so is he, and him, and him....

 Background

I am a Major League Baseball player! I have my own video game named after me! I’m also a lawyer, physical therapist, accountant, and acclaimed french horn player! Wait a second…

I grew up in the small town of Sandwich, IL, population 6500 as the sign reads.  Having my name, Adam Wolf, was fun.  “It’s a strong name,” my parents told why they selected it, and I was the only one around me that I knew of.  It was a fun last name to have that lent itself to some neat animal related nicknames e.g Wolfy, Wolfman, The Wolf, etc.  I thought I was an individual and it was specific just to me.  As I grew, went off to college, and moved to Chicago, I started to learn, I wasn’t the only one.  The first close, Jewish friend I made taught me at 22 years old (not much diversity in Sandwich as you might have guessed) that I was third Adam Wolf that she knows and that Adam Wolf is a very popular name in the Jewish community.  It turns out, it’s a very popular name regardless of the community that you’re in.  I had a hard time finding a lot of specific information about me.  Google Images doesn’t even have me in the first page of over 100 images. 

Image Source: Personal Use

ClustrMaps.com tells me there is 207 people in their records with the same name as me, and 16 of them are in Illinois. Not to mention, the last name Wolf can be spelled at least four different ways, which makes it even more ubiquitous. 

Image Source: Personal Use

Many of the websites I did my data dive in showed me many of the same, free reports confirming my immediate family members and my address, but there were little specifics to be found, which I’m glad about.  

Image Source: Personal Use

My salary is posted with the rest of the public employees of Illinois, but that was to be expected. 

Image Source: Personal Use

I dug in a little deeper to try and locate my online presence more specifically by adding some professions and activities I participated in such as teacher and improv comedy (I spent 10 years or so in the early 2000s performing around Chicago).  Turns out, I’m not even in the top five for those results either, which says something about the fame, or lack of, that I achieved. It also proves that I wasn’t very good about getting my name out there for people to find me, but that was never really my goal. 

Image Source: Personal Use

What I Found and How I Felt About It

Image source: Personal Use

The only time I actually found relatable information to me was when I included an address or my current place of employment, and this pleases me.

However, Truthfinder.com did give me a reputation score of 2.89-4.04, which piques my interest a bit, but I also believe this may be a solid attempt at getting me to buy my “Reputation Profile,” which, based on my lack of findings everywhere else, I’m not interested in.

I’ve done a good job at keeping my personal life off the internet, and I haven’t had anything happen in my life with enough significance to garner online attention, which I’m OK with.  Although, as I type that sentence, it does give me a bit of a mid-life crisis feeling that I haven’t done much with my life, but in this case, I’ll take the “no news is good news” approach.  

Digital Literacy and Teaching It To Kids 

However, I wasn’t raised in today’s world that values and seems to require a social media presence.  When I was a kid, Digital Literacy and understanding our Digital Tattoos wasn’t necessary. Today, it absolutely is.  I believe that all students beginning in middle school should receive a course in basic social media use and your Digital Tattoo.  The two places I see this making the most sense are in a Technology “specials” classroom or from the school libarian/LMC specialist.  I’ve actually worked as an instructional coach with our school’s current librarian in beginning to research what a course on this might look like using lessons on your digital footprint from commonsense.org. 

Professional Use

Now that I am in my current role and have a part in the interview process of hiring new teachers, it’s one of first steps I take in checking the background of potential candidates, especially those under 30 who have spent their entire lives on the internet and social media.  I instruct those I meet who are seeking a new teaching job to make sure to do their best to “scrub” their social media accounts so they’re professional presence is clean.  I’ve had a good friend run into some issues from a picture that was posted of them in college.  It took some serious explaining for him to be hired, and he has since wiped those from the internet. It could have been worse. 

Personal Use

I use the same tactics now that my children are getting older.  When they ask to go the house of a new friend and we don’t much about them, when they get a new coach on their teams, or when I’m simply curious about a new neighbor, all it takes is a quick Google search to find out a bit more about them.  I’m learning that most adults don’t understand the concept of a Digial Footprint and how much information is about them online. 

Luckily, having worked in a middle school during this day and age has made me aware of this and how someone’s digital tattoo can follow them for years. Thus, my wife and I made an explicit decision to try and keep our children’s pictures and life experiences off of social media until they’re old enough to make that informed decision themselves.  One never knows what path they might take in life, and if a future path they take requires them to have a clean digital record, we don’t want to have been the ones to handcuff them, whether it was intentional or not. 

In Summary

I’m glad I went through this data dive on myself to confirm the fact that I’m not spread over the internet in places I didn’t really want to be, at least not without paying for information.  So, in the meantime, I’ll just let people think I’m a Major League Baseball player - that’s kind of fun alter ego to have and story to tell.