Social Media Identity

Freitas, Donna. “The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost”. Oxford University Press, 2016. Ebook.

Currently, people are living in a virtual world that is dominated by social media; the influence of emergences of social media platform, such as Facebook, YouTube, has far beyond the imagination of people（Pennsylvania, 2011）.There are an increasing number of people who are willing to use social media to manage their identity, which offers a large amount of opportunities for those audiences who want to standing out from the crowd.(Matthieu; Serge et al, 2013) But because of information overload, to some extend, social media are probably making it harder for them to differentiate from the counterpart .In view of the fact, how to manager personal identity has been view as a vital

Dr. Rachna Jain, a social marketer, says in her article, 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Your Relationships, “people can become so seduced by the ease of connecting with others online that we begin to think that these relationships are more intense, more committed, and more complete than they really are.” Misallocating the priority of real-life relationships on to online ones causes people to hinder their opportunities to make actual relationships of substance. Another effect of being too invested in social media is that we compare ourselves to others too much. With all of the different platforms available on social media, we are able to see very much into other people’s lives, or rather the part of their lives that they want to share which may or may not be doctored. These fake impressions of having perfect lives and always being happy cause people to compare the things that they don’t have to the things that others do and the things that they do have to the things that others have better versions of. Also, knowing that people are watching us all of the time, there is pressure to uphold a specific persona so that we can be the type of person who people

When Did Lives on Social Media Become More Time-Consuming than Our Social Lives by Jessica Remo argues that what people post social media is not portraying the truth to their daily lives. Social media allows the individual to post a picture, video, status, and edit these to make it seem like their lives are better than others. “Social media allows the user to create their own TV channel and make their lives seem better than they really are,” (Remo). In addition to portraying a fake live, these posts have negative impacts on the viewers. With 92 percent of those between 18 and 29, and 73 percent of people in their 30’s and 40’s using social media, this gives each individual the ability to control their image, and people’s impression of them.

In modern society, one of the major determinants of our sense of wellbeing, in my opinion, is comparing ourselves to others. While comparison motivates us to learn good qualities, pursue a brighter future and own a grateful hearts, it also has an adverse effect when we compare our true inner selves to the pictures of perfect life created by others on social media.

Finally, social media has become a way individuals negatively judge themselves as inferior to others. Americans have taken extreme actions to live up to the impractical social expectations. This is connected to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotions. People change their image for society acceptance, and personal acceptance, because many want to fit the image social media says is right. An article published by CNN states that “the more time adolescent spent on Facebook, the more likely they were to develop a negative body image and eating disorders” (Mary). A person’s body changes from day to day, a lot of people think they are overweight, ugly, etc. which in reality they almost certainly aren’t. They are used to what society says one

How can this be true? Is it not social media’s very nature to include rather than exclude? Yet, studies recorded by Nottingham Trent University, a direct correlation exists between those with high social media use and low self-esteem, loneliness, and various other mental health issues. These findings allow many seemingly casual social media users to realize that their involvement with these networks are slowly shackling their mind. Various students polled by Bucknell University often find the most relief when they are away from social media, and feel more active in their own lives. This relief coincides with the belief held by Sontag that these images that people are constantly subject to “bleach out a moral response to what is shown,” fortifying feelings that these enumerated aspects of social media perpetuate negative health for all

You would think that being yourself is the way to go, but over the time you realize that we all are conformist. Although I should know better by now, I cannot help but think about that being an individual is what most of us want, but hard to attain. However, someone who loves themself and embarsises their flaws everyday without doubt will achieve to be an individual. In fact, someone who doesn't care what others might think about them without doubt will stand out and be who they truly are. Unfortunately, their are others who hate their self and won't embrace themself because they are to scared about what others might say or think. Let me tell you that's not the way to go. Being scared of who you are and what others might think is like you're being trapped in a cage where you can't be free --- but not Leopard Man! He is known as “Leopard Man” or “freak” described by Feys, Logan in his article "The Sociology of Leopard Man" because he is tatted up from head to toe with leopard spots and lives all by himself isolate in the wildernest. Leopard is happy to be himself he embraces it every single day. If he can be happy and not give a care to the world because he doesn't bother to listen to what others might think or feel about him and that's not stopping him from being himself --- then what’s stopping

Lack, in a study titled The Relationship Between Personality Traits and Social Media Use, Nihan Ozguven and Burcu Mucan-- quantitative social researchers at Dumlupinar and Dokuz Eylul University-- conducted a study that contradicted Towler’s interview with Dr. Lack. Ozguven and Mucan further analyzed the effects social media usage could render on personality types and the correlations between the two. According to their study relating to ages of 18 to 31, they discovered that “ 19% used them [social media] for 4 to 6 hours a day, 6% used them [social media] for 7 to 9 hours a day, and 5% used them [social media] for more than 10 hours a day” (Ozguven, Mucan 2013). Based off of these statistics and additional experiments, they concluded that “those who are open to experience, and those more satisfied with their lives tend to use social media more” and that there was no correlation between social media usage and other particular personalities: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness (Ozguven, Mucan 2013). Further work in this area of social media use may lead to the development of broader correlations between why the claims that people who enjoy their life as a whole use social media more than those are not as happy with their lives. However, while Ozguven and Mucan work demonstrates positive aspects of social media, more studies would have to be done to conclude the certainty of the positive

A person’s online and offline identity is heavily influenced by which social media outlets that person uses. Through researching the topic of how identity is constructed through social media, it is seen that a person’s identity can be influenced by the types of media they used and how often. When choosing this topic, my group members and I intended to research a larger area if identity. We wanted to explore how gender, sexuality, and race were explicitly affected by social media. We planned to break down and explain each piece of identity and describe how each one was influenced by social media. The research topic was too broad, so we narrowed it down to only mention gender, sexuality, and race and not break them down.

Social media allow us to depict our life in an ideal way through editing, yet these edited posts promote unrealistic standards for our sense of happiness. We feel unhappy and unsatisfied with our real life because all we see on social media is others’ “perfect lives”. Reynolds shares her personal experience to illustrate this idea: felt lonely and isolated in reality, she amplified her social media presence and sought validation and comfort from likes and comments; however, she felt her old friends had better lives than she did when she saw them posting happy pictures with their new college besties. When she compared her life with her old friends’ “happy lives” on social media, she felt sad, isolated, and unhappy with her own life. Reynolds’

In a famous Pixar movie, the Incredibles, Elastigirl quoted, “Your identity is your most valuable possession. Protect it.” Society along with our generation has transformed over the course of time. We create society and in return society creates us. There are a substantial amount of influences and molding characteristics that compose our identity, so how has identity instilled in my life? As for me, social media has had an ever-growing impact of identification on my mental, physical, and social spheres daily.

Women lurk on a man’s page seeking for their materialistic items such as cars, money, and the way a man dresses. Instances such as these causes low self-esteem of individuals who do not portray these specific items or lifestyles on social media. USA Today asked 23 Chicago college students about social media and 20 out of 23 students believed social media caused anxiety or added stress to an individual’s life. One female college student believed that social media adds a lot of pressure to be the perfect person, because that’s how individuals can make themselves look online. A lot of women on social media with low self-esteem issues show their skin and wear revealing outfits to feel “better” about their own body by taking into account how many likes on Instagram or Facebook they receive. The college students have realized it was easy to portray a different version of them on the internet. Individuals believe the number of likes on Facebook/Instagram or retweets on Twitter is used as a tool for verification for acceptance within their group of peers. This can cause a domino effect of problems on an individual’s self-esteem. An individual will post photos that are outside their character just to seek approval through the likes from their peers. This may boost an individual’s self-esteem temporarily, but once he or she logs off social media their self-esteem really hasn’t improved. Valkenbur, P. M., Peter, J., & Shouted, A. P. (2006). Friend

As technology progress, humans evolve to the advanced technology and enhance our lives via technology. We connect to our families, friends and others through social media such as Facebook. Social media takes up a huge part in our lives. Social media infest us with information that are relevant and irrelevant to us. Marry Marrow wrote, “It was Facebook that changed the face of e-communication; in fact, it was the first electronic social media” (para 1). She assumes that Facebook is playing a huge role in electronic communication. In the journalist Maria Konnikova, “How Facebook makes us unhappy?”, Konnikova divulges many aspects of people on social media through researching and experience, and finds how social makes us unhappy. I agree with Konnikova findings after reading her article. In addition, she concludes that if you are engaged, active, and creative you will not sorrowful on Social media, however if you are passively browsing and defuse to engage, you will be depressed.

The internet has a greater impact on people today than ever before. It has been a constant source of news, entertainment, and education for users around the world for more than twenty years. However, the most revolutionary of its technologies, social media, didn’t achieve mainstream popularity until about ten years ago. As a result of this new development, Facebook, Twitter, and similar services are becoming the most visited destinations on the internet. These websites allow users to quickly and easily share pictures, links, ideas and messages with other users; theoretically facilitating social interaction. But do these self-proclaimed social networking tools actually encourage healthy human interaction? The evidence suggests that they do.