The internet feels like a scrapbook we never agreed to keep. We were told as kids to “watch what you post,” but somewhere between middle school fan-cams and the era of daily photo dumps, that warning faded. Social media changed, we changed, and suddenly we reached college with an online presence built from years of impulsive posting, forgotten usernames, and whatever the algorithm chose to remember.
What makes it even stranger is how permanent everything becomes once it’s online. If you look up my name, one of the first results is a Prezi presentation I made when I was eight years old. I don’t remember the login, the password, or why nine-year-old me felt the need to publish an autobiography on the internet, but it’s still there. It’s a digital artifact I can’t remove, floating at the top of my search results like an accidental résumé line. It’s a reminder that your online presence isn’t just what you curate now. It’s everything you ever posted, intentionally or not.
It takes one quick Google search to pull up old accounts, photos, and the versions of ourselves we’ve long outgrown. Employers can see it. Grad schools can see it. Honestly, anyone curious enough can see it. Out of curiosity, I once asked ChatGPT to describe me based only on my public online presence, and it could. It’s not because I overshare, but because so much of our lives exists online in ways we barely think about.
However, none of this is a reason to disappear from the internet entirely. Being online isn’t the issue; being accidental about it is. There’s a way to share your life without turning it into a public diary, and there’s a way to shape your online presence, so it actually supports where you’re trying to go.
It’s less about performing and more about intention: deciding what belongs in public, what belongs in private, and what belongs only to you.
One part of this conversation that people overlook is how your online presence becomes part of your professional identity. You don’t need a hyper-curated feed or a perfectly worded LinkedIn bio, but your digital footprint should at least reflect some version of the direction you’re moving in. Your young adult years are when you start building the version of yourself you want people to recognize, not in a fake way, but just in a more coherent one.
Every project you work on, every club you join, every job or research experience you take on becomes part of your “brand,” even if you don’t mean it that way, and people do look for that story. In fields like the humanities (where opportunities often come from your writing, research interests, or intellectual personality), it actually matters that your online presence aligns with who you’re becoming. If your résumé says one thing but your social media suggests something completely different, it becomes harder for people to understand what drives you.
This is where intentional posting is genuinely useful. Sharing your work or your accomplishments isn’t bragging; it gives people context. It shows you’re engaged. It shows direction. It makes you memorable in spaces where hundreds of people are doing similar work. A simple post about a project you care about or something you learned can quietly work in your favor more than you realize.
This doesn’t mean everything should go online. The healthiest digital presence has layers: there’s the public layer: your general interests, hobbies, academic direction, and personality; the personal layer: your relationships, daily life, and the things meant for people who actually know you; and the inner layer: the parts of your life that don’t need an audience at all.
Separating those layers makes sharing feel intentional rather than exposed. It’s not about hiding anything; it’s about recognizing which parts of your life you want to protect.
When your online presence matches the direction you’re moving in, it becomes an asset rather than something to worry about. Employers and grad schools aren’t looking for perfection; they’re looking for consistency, curiosity, and professionalism. Your online presence can communicate that long before you ever sit in an interview.
You don’t need to overshare to feel authentic, and you don’t need to vanish to feel safe. You just need to post with intention. The internet doesn’t have to feel like a spotlight — it can be a space you shape, rather than something that shapes you.
Once you decide what belongs online and what doesn’t, sharing stops feeling overwhelming and starts feeling meaningful. The rest gets to stay yours!
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