How has the way we present ourselves on social media changed over time, and how does this impact our self identity?
As social media has changed, so has the way we interact with it. It has become a more substantial part of everyday life and how we communicate with others. It is pretty obvious that teenager use social media differently than older generations. Looking at these differences can help us understand the direction that social media is going in and the impact that it has on us. It is often emphasized to the youth that we need to make sure we keep our online presence clean, but I think this idea of an online presence is harmful to teenagers self identity. We are often told that everyone will be looking at our profiles, from colleges, to coaches, to future employers. While this advice is meant to help us, it only enforces the role of social media in determining one's self identity. While social media has greatly evolved to allow us to do amazing things, it has also grown to put immense pressure on teenagers to conform to a social standard. One major thing I’ve seen develop over the past couple years is the idea of having an aesthetic or “theme” to one's own profile, particularly on instagram. Many teenagers become almost obsessed with the way that their instagram or other social media profiles look to others.
I wanted to dive deeper into this idea and find out how the different ways we choose to project ourselves on social media can impact our self identity. I wanted to look at how this changes between generations, so I sat down with my mother to discuss how we use social media differently and how we think about what we post.
One of the biggest things that I took away from this conversation was the drastically different ways that me and my mom view the purpose of social media. My mom sees it as a way to keep up to date on the things she likes, while I see it as a way to look at my peers lives and see who is doing the coolest things. She brought up that she doesn’t like to follow too many people because she is afraid she will miss anything, while I feel like I have to follow a lot of people so I don't miss anything.
While my mom mostly posts pictures of her garden or things she sees in nature, I, along with many other teens, post pictures that are centered around me and how I want people to see me. Somewhere in between our generations, social media has become a way to describe and identify who you are as a person. The Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences states that “The Social Network is gaining more and more importance in today’s world and has a deeper impact on the society as to the traditional media… the enable individuals present themselves to others and determine the way they would like to be perceived”. While it is unlikely that anyone is closely scrutinizing others profiles, the pressure to have a “perfect” one can be harmful to teenagers.
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Teenagers have started to develop two distinct identities, their real life identity and their digital one. The digital identity can be deleted and reinvented as many times as the teenager desires. This constant change can create a sense of being lost in one's own identity. However, it could also allow a teenager to express themselves in ways they might not be able to in their real life. I was recently searching for roommates for the next semester, and a big part of searching was looking at peoples instagram page and judging if I would get along with them based on it. Peoples instagram pages were acting as a resume to say "this is who I am and what I'm about". Many teenagers know this, adding extra pressure to put out the image they want.
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After having a conversation with my mother and doing research, I’ve realized not only that we use social media differently, but we think and incorporate it into our lives differently. She thinks of it as a form of entertainment while I almost consider it a part of me. Along with many other teenagers, I have cultivated an online persona to present myself to others the way I want to be seen, even if it's different from my real life.
Works Cited
Gündüz, U. (2017). The Effect of Social Media on Identity Construction. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 8(5), 85. Retrieved from http://www.richtmann.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/10062.
Van der Merwe, Petro. “Adolescent Identities in the Cyberworld.” Journal of Psychology in Africa, vol. 27, no. 2, Apr. 2017, pp. 203–207. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14330237.2017.1303129.
Malvini Redden, Shawna, and Amy K. Way. “How Social Media Discourses Organize Communication Online: A Multi-Level Discursive Analysis of Tensions and Contradictions in Teens’ Online Experiences.” Communication Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 5, Nov. 2019, pp. 477–505. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01463373.2019.1668440.
My instagram profile
