Personal digital identity refers to a person’s online presence; who they are and how they personally present themselves in the digital world. This can be determined through their private posts, writing style, tone, comments and overall, private content on social media. My personal digital identity is a rather accurate reflection or representation of my actual person. I would claim that it is largely controlled. Other than YouTube, I only have three social media platforms on which I am rather private: Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn. I rarely post content, never share my location, what I have posted is usually not extremely personal, and I closely monitor who I allow to see my content and interact with it.

As Manju George stated in the 2019 World Economic Forum, “over 60% of the global GDP is expected to be digitized by 2022.” Digital identities are increasingly important to have as they can allow for an enriched and enlarged PLN, which can in turn help us reach our personal or even professional objectives. This is what Jawed, Mahboob and Yasmeen partly imply in their article Digital professional identity: Dear Internet! Who am I? (2019) That Digital identities can make — or break — one’s digital professional identity (DPI). They define DPI as a “professional identity that develops through internet-based social interactions by utilizing online platforms and communication tools.” Subsequently, a personal digital identity can easily alternate a DPI for better or for worse from other professionals’ perspectives. For example, having a controlled and minimal use of my private social media platforms, the risk of them negatively affecting my LinkedIn page, therefore my DPI, is extremely low.

The increased importance of the digital space also led to fewer face-to-face interactions, often causing mental health issues in some people as in-person connection is a basic human need. People too highly engaged in digital world may lose their interpersonal communication skills. Moreover, Jawed et al.’s article explains that medical students who frequently use social media to communicate with other likeminded people within the same or a similar field showed that past a certain threshold, their academic performance — in addition to decreased interpersonal communication and their ability to partake in that, as well as higher exposure to mental health problems — is usually greatly negatively affected.