Identity Crisis

Humans are inherently flawed, we forget things, make mistakes and more often than not things go wrong. However, for most of us this is not the case for our online identities and personas. From Facebook to LinkedIn the people we are online is beginning to diverge further and further from the people we are in real life.

No longer are our lives simply just one identity, but two. The one we live in red life that goes to work, to a job they usually hate and spends most nights watch TV or Netflix. And the other, a fabricated perception of our true self but one who has an awesome job and is out every night and the coolest bars or nicest beaches, essential a character we play online in an attempt to impress people we barely know. And at the heart of this lies the current issue with social media and online identities. They’re simply not real.

Portraying simply the happiest and positive aspects of our real lives, online identities have evolved from a means of sharing life updates with friend and family to boasting or bragging about accomplishments and physical appearance. And while many may write this off as modern societies gradual fall into a more materialistic world, the impact of online behaviour has on teenagers and youth cannot be underestimated (O’Keefe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011). Growing idolising the “Instafamous” societies youth are developing a perverted idea of what a happy life looks like, essentially aspiring to the kind of happiness that is only ever achieved through editing and strategic posting.

With so many teenagers using social media further links have also been drawn between excessive use of social media and mental health with many teens suffering from low esteem and feeling sad or envious when seeing other people lifestyles that they are unable to achieve (Mental Health Foundation, 2016). With comparisons drawn between social media and the kind of teen magazines that once promoted body dysmorphia the filtered sense of reality that social media provides needs to be seen as a similar threat to teens and youth.

Whether it be through the “Instafamous” promoting an unrealistic lifestyle or more simply friends and family promoting their own fabricated versions of happiness it’s important to recognise the impact that these online identities have on society and the way people perceive themselves in reality and develop ways to help reduce the cases of mental health problems that come from living in two versions of reality.

-Dylan Hartnett

References

1. Mental Health Foundation. (2016). Social media and young people’s mental health. [online] Available at: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/blog/social-media-and-young-peoples-mental-health [Accessed 6 Mar. 2017].

2. O’Keeffe, G.S. and Clarke-Pearson, K., 2011. The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families. Pediatrics, 127(4), pp.800-804.

#socialmedia #netflix #health