As of March 2019, I am a member of eleven different social media platforms, and I have two to four accounts on each that I for myself or manage for others. Whether we are promoting a brand or sharing personal information, the ability to shift and mold a rather convincing authentic online persona has never been easier. In this digital age, it is not surprising to see our phones loaded with the potential to reach thousands with the click of a button. Users have access to entire libraries of information with applications to assist them in becoming whoever or whatever they want to be.

As I have explored the online space in the years, it has become more apparent to me the difference between authentic representations of our own selves and the expectations of what those “selves” should be. What could be public in person, could be hidden online. In looking at the way our culture has grown to define self within the scope of social media, expectations often are twisted views of reality. In this paper, we will be exploring the idea of our expectations versus our realities when it comes to the identities we choose to present online.

With these leaps in technological advancement, as Miller (2011) suggests, “the line between actual and the virtual is continually being crossed (p. 39)” and the truth of who we are is somewhere in the middle. My exploration of the digital space started when I was a pre-teen on MySpace. My identity was very close to my true self since a majority of the people I was connected with online, were also people I would see the next day at school. Why try to change a perception of yourself when someone would be seeing you the next day anyway?  My identity online was most similar to my school identity, although I could be viewed as someone different in different areas of my life, like with my family or at work. Reed (2014) contextualizes this idea throughout society saying, “our identities have always been performative, collective, and variable (p. 56),” shifting depending on the group we are surrounded by. However, as time has gone on and my accounts on these platforms have grown, so have my own choices in how I present myself online and to those groups I am surrounded by.

Although my online identity spans so many different platforms, I still remain relatively the same throughout each. My identities within my family, friends, and career have grown closer together as I have matured. As Reed (2014) explains, cyberspace has, “evolved its own special forms, styles, rules, structures, and identities but these never stray far from offline connections (p. 20).” Though I may not share every detail of my personal life, I am still very close to my offline self. I merely hide some of the darker, less glamorous, or needless parts of myself.

Even as I have talked with friends over time, many treat social media like their ten-year reunion. They want to look better, or just be better, than their past selves or their peers. The interesting part of that is that we collectively understand and acknowledge this trend, but it has not impacted the way we use these platforms. In self-reflecting my own social media posting habits, I naturally want to look and sound like I am at my best every time I post. I will even ask friends, as Reed (2014) alludes to in discussing fluid identities, to help me choose or take the perfect photo (p. 55).  If the picture I post does not help me look like I have lost weight or I am the happiest I have ever been, why would I post it? It has become a ritual of sorts, sharing phones and retaking photos until the collective has chosen the representative image.

Even though it seems harmless to want to showcase the best parts of life, we a society have begun twisting to expect this kind of habitual posting. Virtual media is no longer just sharing about our lives, it is about curating the life we believe we should have. We know that we are only seeing the best of someone’s life, so what advantage would we have in posting the worst of ours? We are at risk to our own identities if we cannot separate the expectations of virtual life from the reality of the world we live in today (Reed, 2014,p. 56). Through this self-reflection though, I have had to hold myself accountable for the part I play in misrepresenting myself. My online-self adheres and plays by the expectations of the day, but as a practitioner who is also on the business side, the responsibility goes deeper. I have the ability to shape the conversations and communities online. It is a responsibility I feel that I and many like me have forgone in search of achieving an ever-elusive idea of perfection.  

References

Miller, V. (2011). Understanding digital culture. London: SAGE Publications.

Reed, T.V. (2014). Digitized Lives – Culture, Power, and Social Change in the Internet Era. New York, NY.  Routledge Publishing.