In our society, people are defined by many types of identities such as name, gender, job, nationality, etc… Without these identities, society will collapse. When the internet is born, a brand new world is introduced to people, a world in which everyone can express their thoughts and opinion anonymously. This quickly leads to problems such as the excessive amount of hate speech, rumors, and scams since people don’t need to take responsibility for their words and actions. This is why digital identity is important just like real-world identities. Digital identity is basically how you represent yourself on the internet. Whether you are a person, an organization, or a company, you always need information about yourself in order to interact with others. It can be basic information such as your name, age, and gender. It can also be complicated information such as your religion, values, and political status. It is what helps us to communicate with other people online and to help other people understand us better.
A personal account is our leisure space. We share moments with our friends and families, and our speech on this account would be more relaxing and careless. Professional accounts, on the other hand, are very formal in every way. For example, we want to demonstrate our professional skills in order to get a job. Personal and Professional approaches to digital identities are different but not isolated. Even though people tend to have different accounts for their personal and professional life, there is still some information that is the same for both accounts such as name and age, and others can easily find your personal life through your professional account.
Digital identity grants us safety on the internet by making everyone transparent online. It also makes public services much easier. Nowadays, we can do a lot of things such as pay bills, order on Amazon, and study online. These are all possible because of digital identity. The downside to this is that everything is so transparent that identity theft starts to become a problem. This is why people are now working on identity protection so we can protect our information.
Reference:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137405876_6
Hi Adam,
I agree with you how identities are crucial for societies not to collapse. I also believe that there are many vulnerabilities when it comes to allowing people to have these identities as they can use it as a mask and spread not so positive ideas. Though overall the positives definitely outweigh the cons. I like how you mentioned online shopping through a digital identity because that is definitely important and a good use of a digital identity.
Thanks for sharing,
Kevin S