Google search yourself!

The importance of how you are perceived online depends, unfortunately, on your age and profession. After grade 12 is when your identity online becomes relevant. Post secondary, jobs, housing, etc. are all kinds of things that might take a look at you online. If someone researches you online and finds something they don't like they may put your name at the bottom of the pile. 

To protect mine I don't post much online at all. I use the internet more as a resource of information. This being said I think my online identity would be the one who used to be really active in the online world but now has stop using most things. For example I have twitter and facebook but I only post something monthly even though I actually use them everyday to look for ideas and interesting things.
We need to make sure our students understand how their online presence can affect their offline life. As an example I know of people who search people online when they get their resume... if they see something they don't like online about this person they don't get the job and most of the time they aren't asked to explain why such things are on the internet.

Below is a screen shot when I "googled" myself. Nothing about me came up except this blog, but this blog is set up through google and I was signed in. I decided to go "Yahoo" myself and nothing showed up about me... I guess I don't have much of an online identity.