A study on digital footprint awareness and digital footprint experiences of higher education students (Sakarya University Communication Faculty example)

Since computer and internet technologies entered our lives, they have been continuously developing and becoming more complex day by day. The increase in technological opportunities and the fact that people all over the world could access these opportunities more easily than before, make it necessary to explain the field in detail and to examine the innovations introduced. The concept of digital footprint also gains importance at this point, and the question of whether internet users are aware of the traces they leave behind in the cyber environment emerges as a vital question. The transfer of many activities carried out in daily life to the virtual world should also give awareness that user responses and behaviors are recorded in this new technological environment. In this direction, since it is known that college students' use of technology is higher than other age groups, this study has been carried out with college students. The aim of this study is to determine the level of digital footprint awareness and life status of Sakarya University (SAU) students. The universe of the study consists of SAU Faculty of Communication students who continue their education in the 2022-2023 academic year. The sample group of the study consisted of 288 people, 140 men and 148 women, studying at SAU Faculty of Communication. As a data collection tool, the Questionnaire of Higher Education Students Use of Digital Media was used. The data was evaluated in IBM SPSS 29 program employing Frequency Distribution, Independent Sample t-Test, One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey tests. As a result of this investigation, it was found that the digital footprint awareness of the participants is high, whereas the digital footprint experience status of the participants is low. The digital footprint awareness of female students was found to be higher than male students.