Illustration by Lucas Santana Aguiar
The most common way people understand society is through their interactions with others. In our digital age, and with the technological advances of social media, people have changed the way they interact and communicate with one another. Social media allows us to instantaneously connect and share information with friends, family members, acquaintances and even strangers. This allows people to form an online identity that may or may not be a reflection of who they are in the real world. If we think about why people online stay connected with one another, the most obvious answer would be that these digital connections appear to resemble real-life relationships. Online connections offer a space for people to be themselves and express their interests in an environment that could be more accepting than the real world.
With the extensive use of social media, more and more people are displaying their lives online. Adolescents, in particular, increasingly rely on their online identity through the use of posts, stories and reels as an essential means of self-presentation. In addition, they are constantly exposed to photographs and videos that display idealized self-perception by others on these platforms. However, many people’s appearances on these channels are often selectively portrayed or edited to achieve an attractive self-presentation. This consequently creates a toxic online environment with appearance ‘norms’ that are almost impossible to achieve and keep up with. This could potentially cause a threat to this generation’s self-esteem. However, this negative impact could depend on social media interactions and engagement. Those who actively post updates in the form of selfies online, may position themselves to receive positive feedback and appearance validation from their followers, thus enhancing self-esteem. However, this can very quickly turn into an unhealthy obsession of constantly sharing selfies online for public validation and approval. This is because users indulge in a culture of looking perfect and attractive to gain ‘likes’ and positive comments, which to them symbolizes popularity, validation and desirability.
This digital generation is stuck in a position of trying to create themselves. Even though growing up and making sense of the real world is already complicated enough, they are now given an alternative space where they need to display their identity to the world in order to fit in. There are many people who find themselves constructing two or even multiple different identities because of this. This self-division creates a state of confusion about who the person actually is. It becomes difficult for a person to feel grounded in their own person. Users behave and represent themselves differently as they move from one social media platform to the other. For example, the same person may be inclined to present themselves differently on LinkedIn compared to on Instagram. This makes us think about whether our online identity is somehow less genuine and authentic or if it is just dynamic and changing with different contexts and ongoing interactions.
In 2018, Instagram introduced a new feature called ‘close friends’ in which a person can invite only a specific audience, usually their closest friends, to view their stories. Users do this as a way of managing personal information about themselves and only allowing a selective audience into this part of their identity. In these ‘close friends’ stories, a person feels more comfortable in being themselves without being too ‘performative’. This is a popular trend among the youth who try to conceal a part of their identity from judgmental people or people who they are uncomfortable with.
In addition, if we think about high-profile individuals on Twitter, such as celebrities, politicians and influencers, every tweet that they craft is usually in sync with the elements of ‘performance’. The appearance, setting and manner in which they word their tweets have to be coherent and consistent in terms of content so that it is portrayed as authentic content to their followers.
The presence of multiple audiences on these social media platforms means that users have to actively monitor how they present themselves in order to meet the different expectations of these different audiences. This potentially leads to people having multiple identities online.
“The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” is a book written by sociologist Erving Goffman and was published in 1959. In his book, he uses the concept of the theatre to explain the importance of human and social interaction. He refers to this as the dramaturgical model of social life, where according to him, people in everyday life are the actors playing multiple roles depending on the scenario and the setting. The audience consists of other people in society observing and reacting to these performances. Goffman’s concept is strikingly similar to the lines from ‘As You Like It’ by William Shakespeare. “The entire world is a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances, and one man in his life plays many parts.” Goffman argued that people wear a variety of different masks in front of others while they control and stage how they appear in these ‘acting roles.’ Individuals are constantly concerned with how they present themselves to society and are always trying to set themselves in the best light that is more favourable to the audience of that specific setting. Humans adapt who they are depending on the group or individual that they are interacting with. An example of this would be in a job interview. In such a setting, a person will find themselves automatically playing two divergent roles but putting their more professional self is in the forefront.
“Be true to yourself” is a phrase that is commonly thrown around however, it can be a complicated message to understand. What if a person is unsure about who their true self is?
Some people believe that a person’s true self lies deep down and beyond the surface or that their true self is underneath the stereotypes and labels of everyday life. They believe that an individual’s external identity and the mask that they display to others in society is likely a combination of their experiences, expectations and views which can somehow obscure one’s true self. However, Goffman believed that a person’s ‘true self’ does not exist. In other words, there is no identifiable performer. He challenged the fact that each person has a fixed character and identity. He believed that all the roles that are played by people are constantly changing between foreground and background based on the setting and situation they are in. This could be the case when someone meets with people from very different social groups at once and have to juggle different masks at once. People try to strike up conversations about common interests and to gather as much information as they can get about the person standing Infront of them in order to understand how to act and react to things. This is a common thing people do to get positive attention and feedback in order to fit in and please the audience.
Even though Goffman did not witness the emergence of social media, he did a great job at referring to it and somehow predicting it. His theory helps in understanding the way society in this age and time uses online social networks. The internet being everywhere and participative in nature, more and more people are taking part in this ever-expanding social capital. People are constantly going online seeking social validation and approval in terms of their online self-presentation. This ultimately puts users at a high risk of losing their self in the process of self-presentation.
References:
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https://doi.org/10.15760/honors.64 - Steinsbekk, S., Wichstrøm, L., Stenseng, F., Nesi, J., Hygen, B. W., & Skalická, V. (2020, August 20). The impact of social media use on appearance self-esteem from childhood to adolescence – a 3-wave community study. Computers in Human Behavior. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563220302806
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