Social media is an online platform and website that enables people to create and share content and participate in social networking. But the online space is artificially constructed, there is no confusion whether it is online or offline, and the activities people do online are closely related to the activities they participate in offline (Smith and Watson, 2014). The relationship between online and offline identity on social media is deserves to be studied in depth.
(Take me for example, I share my likes and dislikes on Instagram in order to build an online identity.)
With the increasing popularity of social media nowadays, more people choose to spend more time on their social media accounts communicating with others, viewing interesting things and sharing things about themselves. As one of the biggest social media platforms, Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users (Kelly, 2023). People can build their online identity on Instagram by sharing things that relate to themselves. But do the online identities people build behave as themselves in real life? Simona et al (2023) conducted research, they applied symbolic self-completion theory (SCT) to explain online behavior and predict what users post on Instagram.
Individuals who feel incomplete about their professional identity goals may engage in compensating self-symbolism by increasing the number of goal-achieving indicators posted online. Throughout this research, three involving medical and law students participated in the research, and students who were incomplete in these two fields tended to post more symbols related to their respective goals. Instagram has ideal features for self-expression and identity building, and allows users to convey a specific image of themselves through various forms of posts, so social media platforms such as Instagram offer individuals the opportunity to achieve a sense of self-fulfillment by sharing specific symbols associated with their desired identity.
(My Instagram posts are sometimes designed to fit in with the music community, and I also search for professional information about music, in order to make me look more like a musical person.)
The content shared by social media users often shows their social circles, whereabouts, activities, and so on. Over time and with each post, this content helps shape their online identity. In most cases, this digital persona reflects the real-life characteristics of the individual. Connectivity, self-expression and individualism are key factors influencing user content (lotus823, 2017).
The biggest difference between online identity and real identity is that real identity is not easy to change, while online identity can be changed and improved with people’s wishes. As can be seen in Smith and Watson’s (2014) description, online identity can be manipulated at any time, and this arbitrary management of online content is changing the way we see ourselves and each other. People often show specific aspects of their lives when fashioning their specific online identities. This selective presentation can lead to a lot of differentiation from real identity, emphasizing positive experiences while downplaying or ignoring negative ones. This performance extends even offline, because individuals may combine their real-life behavior with the online persona they create. This may can lead to people’s real-world behavior being influenced by their online identities. While in most cases an online identity mirrors an offline personality, this is not always true (lotus823, 2017). Most social media users like social media because the content they post is noticed by the public, which is why the people who are followed are willing to continue to post. The constant public attention on social media content creators can also have an impact on the content they post later, forcing them to maintain a certain image that the public is more willing to accept. Some creators maintain this popular online identity by Posting wildly exaggerated or made-up content that gets sustained public attention and some amazing responses. But when users’ content is fabricated, they gradually lose a true self and even begin to imagine themselves as constructed online identities. This leads to the birth of an online identity separate from its own. Therefore, when users browse posts on social media, they also need to distinguish the authenticity of the content and whether the identity of the creator has been fabricated.
Social media provides a platform for people to build their online identities, but at the same time reveals the performing nature of online identities as well as offline ones. The essence of performance is to use the convenience of changing online image to achieve the purpose of building a better online image, so as to achieve a sense of self-completion. Although social media can allow people to create a better online image based on their real identity, it should not be exaggerated or even divorced from the essence of their real identity.
Reference List:
Kelly, I. (2023, August 10). Biggest Social Media Platforms by Users In 2024. Earthweb. https://earthweb.com/biggest-social-media-platforms-by-users/#:~:text=Here%20are%20the%20top%2010%20social%20media%20platforms,has%20731%20million%20monthly%20active%20users%20More%20items
Lotus823. (2017 June 15). Social Media Personas | Reality vs. Online Identities. https://lotus823.com/social-media-personas-reality-vs-online-identities/
Simona, S., Federico, C., Camillo, R., Peter M, G. (2023, September 4). Striving for identity goals by self-symbolizing on Instagram. Vol. 47 Issue 6. https://link-springer-com.ezproxy-f.deakin.edu.au/article/10.1007/s11031-023-10039-w
Smith, S and Watson, J 2014, ‘Virtually Me: A Toolbox about Online Self- Presentation’, in Poletti, A and Rak, J (eds.), Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, pp. 70–95.
Images is all form post by myself on the Instagram app.
Hongye wang 