Media and Sense of Identity

With the development of science and technology in this modern society, people rely a lot on social media. Social media affects every aspects of our lives, and changes how we perceive others’ identities and our own. We are the generation of connecting, and the generation of giving all of ourselves to internet. People always connect through various social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and etc. Through these platform, people tend to post something about themselves or their life to show the world what they do and who they are.

Social media has provided us an opportunity to build a very visible and permanent record of ourselves through digital medium. Social media as a tool in re-creating our identities. People try to create a new self by using various apps on social media. On social media, they do the things that they would not do in real life and this has become their new identities that look different from themselves.These new identities that are different from the real identities may cause distrust among people.

Nowadays, social media enable people to hide their real identities and create new identities. For example, people can have their own profile picture and edit their personal information such as name, age, date of birth and etc on Facebook. Some people may misuse the functions that provided on Facebook. They will use others’ profile picture as their own profile picture and they can create their own identities. Some people might use the created information to trick others. This is very danger for others as people can use fake profile to do anything harmful. We would not be able to know the real identity of a person that we do not know through social media by only see his/ her picture because the picture shown maybe not the real person.

Besides, some people might use social media as a platform for them to create a new identity. For example, people might create a blog or page on any social media to show their life which are different from their real life. They want to use different identities to attract people attention and make their life seem perfect. This might cause them to become distrustful of the internet. They will lost their true selves when they are too rely on recreating new identities on social media.

People who are being exposed to social media most of the time are believed to definitely affect their identities. For example, we might be influenced by the our favourite celebrities or person to change our styles based on what they buy or what they wear. We will definitely follow and become like the celebrities or person that we like. We will learn on how to change our identities so we can become like them. People who always feel unsatisfied with their lives or themselves will try to change themselves based on the person that they like， like celebrities. They start to lose their own selves when they tend to imitate other person.

What do you think of the influence of social media on identity? How exactly does the social media persona affect our personal identity and self? Do we still have a self when we change our identities through social media?