When things go wrong in our online life, the first thought is to delete the offending piece and move on with our life. That may be all well and fine depending on who you are. However, you need to remember that just because you delete something does not mean that it is gone forever. There may be someone on your friends list that has decided to take a screenshot of your post. That means that picture or post still exists. Additionally, there is a thing called “caching.” This is the internet’s way of backing itself up. Companies do this in order to make sure that vital information is not lost. They mainly do it for the framework that they have built, but the information that you have posted on there is a by-product and will be caught in the cache. This means, if you do not delete whatever it is you wanted to delete, it may be cached and still be available to be viewed. All that to say, you can’t delete things permanently from the internet. It just isn’t an option.
Perhaps you are not thinking of only deleting a picture or a post. You are thinking more about deleting your entire online presence. Well, this is going to prove just as difficult, if not impossible. While you can delete these profiles and over time they will not be seen as much, they will still exist. The bigger problem here is that you are going to remove any way for people to find out about you. While you may think this is a good thing, we are going to attempt to prove to you, over the course of this blog, that this is not something that you want to do. So, let’s not dilly dally and press on with the reasons that you should not delete your online life.
Employment
If you ever expect to have a meaningful job in the future, you are going to need to have an online presence. Whether you like it or not, companies want to look you up just as bad as you want to look them up. Before you decided to submit your CV to a company, you looked them up. You wanted to know what kind of company you were going to be working with. Well, they want to know what kind of employee they will be hiring. We have gone into how to properly maintain your online presence in other blogs, but we will give you a little information here in case you have missed it.
When they are looking you up, make sure they only see the good things. That means that you will have to stop posting those pictures that you will be ashamed of in the future. You may not think you will now, but there have been several studies that have shown people regret posts in the future. They did this by showing people a post they made 10 – 15 years ago. In most cases, they were ashamed of the post. The best way to decide what to post on your page is to think if you would be happy to show it to a nun or a priest. If the answer is no, then it is best kept to your self.
Lost Connections
Even though social media is rarely used for what it was intended for, it still can be used for communicating with friends. The bad thing is that we don’t use it for this much. We use it as a way to show people how “great” our life is. However, if you are honest with yourself, you rarely post the times when your life is going terrible. Sure, you will post the death of a family member or a pet, but you won’t post when you got fired for saying something you shouldn’t have to your boss. You would rather people think that your life was going swimmingly. The reason for this is psychological, but it doesn’t make it right.
Rather than deleting your online presence, use the platforms as they were intended to be used. Connect with your friends from High School or College. Make new friends that you never thought you would have. It doesn’t matter much. On the other hand, don’t use it as the only way to keep in touch with family and friends. Call them up, have a part, or go to the movies.
Communication
As we said above, you can communicate with friends. However, when we are talking about communication here, we are referring to businesses. A lot of businesses have moved their communication efforts to the internet. That is, in order to express your feelings for the company you are going to need to address them online. Many companies have dropped their toll-free number for questions and comments. Even if they do have this technology still, they have limited staff to answer the phones. That is because they have refocused their efforts to the place they receive the majority of their feedback. If you delete your accounts, you will no longer be able to communicate with these companies.
Conclusion
For every reason that you can think of to delete your online presence, we can provide you with a dozen reasons that you should not. It is time to face the fact that the internet is here to stay. If you expect to move forward in your career, connect with your friends, or communicate with businesses, you are going to need to stay online. That does not mean that you have to post anything. It will just be a way that you can use these services if you so desire. Even though we are telling you that you should not delete these forms of communication, we do recognize that people that choose not to use them are generally happier. The studies have shown that people that use social media less than an hour a day live a happier life. So, maybe you just have the profiles in case you ever need them, but you limit your time on them. That would be a much better idea than deleting your online presence.