Cyberspace allows a person to project a much-better version of himself. Teenagers, attracted to this benefit of virtual reality, tend to spend more time online rather than engage in face to face interactions with their friends. The online experience also provides plenty of opportunities to lie about one’s identity. In today’s society, this writer has observed that teenagers find pleasures in cyberspace that they could not find in real life, thus they are drawn to it. The topic is particularly interesting since family members, including this writer’s own brother, spend long hours online. The reasons why young people spend most of their waking hours online and how such presence affects their social life are discussed further in the succeeding paragraphs.
Creating a new identity
A person can create an entirely new identity in cyberspace. It is definitely far from what occurs in the real world, where making a new acquaintance in person often entails being introduced by a mutual friend, referred by an adult, or participating in a group activity organized by people familiar with your family. In cyberspace, one has just to key in “personal” information and come up with a password. Instantly the “new you” begins to exist. There is nobody there to say the person you created is not you, or the personal details are not yours. Staples cites a 15-year old who poses as a 25-year old expert in Law. When he created his alternate identity, he didn’t feel it was something to be guilty about. This is a common view among online users, including teenagers. Staples added that the creation of new identities gives satisfaction to teenagers because they are able to make up better versions of themselves. Immediately they can take on the roles of adults who are “cool, glamorous, and socially powerful” (para 10). In real life, teenagers have to prove that they are responsible and skilled before adults trust them with a job, but in cyberspace they can pretend to be experts at almost any field.
Using lies and half-truths
The creation of new identities and using such identity to interact with people, even in cyberspace is an act of engaging in lies. Of course, it is always risky to divulge one’s personal information to persons one meets in cyberspace during online games or chat sessions. Adults lie in many different ways to sustain conversations and still come out sincere and these ways are described in Ericsson’s essay. The “façade” is the most closely related way to the teenager’s creation of identity. When the teenager puts in the façade, such as a successful and glamorous expert, he/she is lying to the persons he/she is interacting with. However, “facades can be destructive because they are used to seduce others into an illusion” (Ericsson 2).
Missing out on personal interactions
Adolescents find online social interactions both entertaining and satisfying, but according to Staples they are missing out on important personal experiences that develop one’s maturity. Personal interactions are experiences that are necessary for a person to grow from the teenage stage into life into adulthood. Indeed, cyberspace presents an instant glamorous and successful identity. Lies are employed to project oneself as possessing an attractive personality. These instant images of glamor and success are particularly attractive to teenagers because they are at the point in their lives where they are developing their capabilities and finding themselves. Since the need to have positive self-image is met by teenagers’ altered identities, there is therefore a tendency for them to maintain a steady and constant online presence. When they spend more time as their created identities, it would not be a lie to assert that they can miss out on the opportunities of finding their own identities in the real world.
Works Cited
Ericsson, Stephanie. “The Ways we Lie.” n.d. Retrieved from https://chausseclasses.wikispaces.com/file/view/TheWaysWeLie.doc
Staples, Brent. “Editorial Observer: What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace.” The New York Times.29 May 2004. Web. 27 Jan 2014. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/opinion/editorial-observer-what-adolescents-miss-when-we-let-them-grow-up-in-cyberspace.html
