It's easy to forget sometimes that every move we make online is recorded and essentially kept forever.
Every drunk text, regrettable tweet and out of focus Instagram photo is sitting on servers in air conditioned rooms in nondescript office buildings all across the country.
Every time you agree to the terms of service of some new app or website, buried deep in the unreadable legalese is the permission for that company to collect and keep everything you do on their website.
Almost every website you go to leaves a file called a cookie behind that is designed to remember who you are and what you look at on the Internet, so that website can target advertisements to what you're interested in.
College is a time for growing into adulthood. That growth isn't always easy or mistake free.
Students who went to school before Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat were allowed to forget about the dumb things they've done.
Today, students need to be vigilant to protect their online reputations.
Employers will search for you on Facebook, Twitter or whatever social media site may exist in the future.
Un-tagging or hiding a photo may prevent an employer from finding an embarrassing moment, but it is still online. A selfie never dies; it just gets buried in the news feed.
One tip to avoiding possible embarrassment is to know who you're connecting with while using social media. Adding a friend on Facebook should be something to take more seriously.
Just because your tweets are protected doesn't mean they're private. A devious follower can easily copy and paste anything you tweet.
In fact, having protected tweets could be worse. Anyone wanting to destroy your reputation could easily fake a retweet in your name, and if your tweets aren't visible, people would have no way to tell what you really tweeted.
Trusting who you connect with online is important, but good security practices are equally important.
Having different passwords for different websites is the best way to protect your online information.
Society in the future may become, or will have to become, more forgiving of what our online youth shows the world. But until that day, we should guard what we post online and always remember: the Internet is forever.
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