As I write this, it will have been about two and a half weeks since getting accepted into my Bachelor of Education program. And though I am pumped for what’s to come, I recognize that becoming an educator means that I will eventually begin to model responsible digital literacy.

As an educator, I’ll be expected to teach and model BC’s Digital Literacy Framework to shape my students into future good digital citizens.

With the expectation comes an equally important responsibility for me to model that framework in my own life. If I as a teacher am supposed to be the epitome of the expectations of society and culture, how am I translating that into my own life?

Googling myself

First impressions matter: what are the first things that come up when you look up your name on Google? None of these are me, by the way. (Screenshot from Google, reproduced under Fair Dealing)

At the beginning of the semester, we were asked to do a sort of “self-audit” on our digital footprint by Googling ourselves. It’s pretty clear these days that your digital footprint, though perhaps separate from your professional competencies, have become one and the same.

So in my self-audit, I wanted to see if what the information online I find about me would or could be potentially concerning if I were looking for a job as a teacher in the future.

Firstly, it appears that I am not the only person named “Justin Salinas”. I also share it with a viral baker that even competed on a Netflix show, a former drummer of a heavy metal band, and a resident of Oregon accused of stalking and charged with drug possession and domestic violence.

Secondly, the first two things that pop up on Google that are related to the Justin Salinas that is writing this blog post are my LinkedIn profile and a bio that I wrote when I ran for student senator at UVic.

These two pieces of data on me were written under the impression that this would reach a public audience, especially my LinkedIn profile. It gives a pretty in-depth look into who I am, yet I find it to be professional and in good taste. I am not particularly shy about my employment and educational experience. I don’t think these are a matter of privacy or reputation, but a question of relevancy for those who stumble upon them.

Thirdly, the two other social media accounts that show up when you type my name in are my Instagram and my Threads. My Instagram is public, but I set it as such so that people who I may know are able to easily identify me (so I don’t get confused with the baker or the drummer or a suspect).

I think I curate my Instagram account in a tasteful way since I have a wide range of followers across the multiple facets of my life. In that way, I don’t really have any concerns when it comes to potentially offensive content, but I do recognize the curiosity of my future students who may not recognize professional boundaries. I will be locking my Instagram account down in the near future as a courtesy to myself and to my future students.

Remember Threads? It was (is?) Meta’s response to Twitter, which gained popularity for a short time right after Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. I used it in its short heyday but then deleted the app while having my data still accessible.

There is one post on there that I am not particularly proud of: it’s a picture of me exaggeratedly eating poutine at my old job (at a federally-regulated employer).

This is the actual photo. It’s just me eating cheese.

It’s far from the line of questioning whether I would be able to carry out my duties as a teacher, but it is a bit silly and can bring into question how serious I take my employment. (The picture will probably be deleted soon)

Elsagate

CONTENT WARNING: There are references and representations of an anti-Semitic figure in this section.

As a future educator, not only do I have to embody the expectations myself, but I also have to share with my future students the importance of discerning productive versus harmful content.

Harmful content typically isn’t explicit: think of the “alt-right” pipeline, where extremist views from previously un-radicalized people (usually young teenage boys) subtly and gradually begin to express right-wing extremism.

Elsagate was a scandal that involved YouTube’s family-oriented content preferences. By creators circumventing the website’s content blocking settings, researchers at Cornell University describe the phenomenon as such:

Disney characters, superheroes and other popular childhood characters are depicted in disturbing scenes such as stealing alcohol, hurting each other, drinking from toilets, eating poop, drinking urine, smearing feces on people’s faces, sexual and violent situations… Elsagate videos are a way of getting young children accustomed to sexual and disturbing content so pedophiles can groom them more easily.1

A more mild example of this (if you can believe it) is the following video, an “adaptation” of the classic nursery rhyme “Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed”, but instead of monkeys, it’s Hitler:

“Five little hitlers jumping on the bed”, uploaded by Mitch, June 25, 2019. Reproduced under Fair Dealing. NB: this is not the original video, this is a mirror of the original that was allegedly removed from YouTube.

Equating Hitler with the silly monkeys can mean for young malleable brains that perhaps Hitler has the same whimsical character as the monkeys, and draw empathy towards him in the same way.

Competencies in the BC Digital Literacy Framework include the ability to “judge the validity of content found on the Internet, how to find appropriate material, and what sources can be trusted” by the time students are in grade 5.

So if by grade 5, students don’t question why they’ve never heard *that* version of “Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed,” then perhaps we’re entering into a new age of an illiteracy crisis.

  1. Ishikawa, Akari, Edson Bollis, and Sandra Avila. “Combating the Elsagate Phenomenon: Deep Learning Architectures for Disturbing Cartoons,” 2019. doi:10.48550/arxiv.1904.08910. ↩︎