Social media is commonly lambasted as being a pastime of the youth where they can waste time and spread meaningless memes and misinformation, but the reality is much more complex. Social media is often used by teenagers and young adults, but it is used for a variety of different reasons. Social media sites like Facebook allow users to define their social identity differently than their predecessors. Social media use in general has become an important tool for people today when it comes to building identity; it also allows for much more practical concerns, narrowing the distance between family members and friends who may be spread across the globe. The problem of the online persona is one that has developed over recent generations. There is a common adage among adults trying to teach young people about the dangers of posting on the Internet that nothing on the Internet can ever truly be deleted. The world faces a unique problem today, and that is that one’s many youthful indiscretions may be chronicled on sites like Facebook or other social media, only to turn up later and harm the individual’s personal or political career. While politicians and professionals of the past were not exempt from scandal, they certainly did not face the accessibility of information that is present today.
There are critical ways that social media has developed in recent years that has been a boon to businesses, but there have also been instances of people’s careers being harmed due to the ways that they document their personal lives on Facebook. According to Dimicco and Millen:
We believe there are many potential organizational benefits of increased use of social networking applications. First, social networking sites offer workers improved ways of keeping in touch with colleagues. As more employees work remotely, social networking tools can specifically increase awareness and contact between distant employees. Within many companies, staying in contact and maintaining relationships within an organization are crucial activities for a successful career A second benefit of social networking applications is supporting users in exploring and learning about new employees and team members. This act of people sensemaking can facilitate finding co workers with particular skills or discovering past work experiences that might be relevant to new projects. (Dimicco and Millen)
In short, although there is certainly a way to overuse social media, there are also ways in which social media can be used to create one’s personal and professional identity. The identity that many people choose to put forth in their personal lives is often different from the persona that they create for their professional lives, and the intersection of these two personas on social media platforms creates a unique challenge for young professionals in today’s workforce (Dimicco and Millen). Integrating these two identities has become a problem that many people face in the workforce today.
As social media becomes more integrated into society and the cultural identity of people as a whole, the Internet begins to lose some of its anonymity. Although no one would be so brazen as to claim that an individual cannot be anonymous on the Internet if they desire to be, there are definitely aspects of the Internet that are less anonymous than they used to be. In the early days of the Internet, it was common to hear warnings about maintaining anonymity on the Internet, due to the fact that there are many predators on the Internet; however, today, it is easy to find full names and geographic locations using sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms (Blo and Locher). Building one’s identity and friend group through social media usage is not limited to the professional environment-- social media can and is used for people of all interests and all ages to connect. Because people can so easily move and travel today, it is common to have friends and family spread around the world; social media is used to connect people to their extensive network of relationships, regardless of geographical distance (Bol and Locher).
Despite the fact that social media is reducing Internet anonymity, the user must still take for granted, in most cases, the honesty and reliability of the user on the other end of the computer. It is easy to set up fake Facebook accounts or blogs with fictional information; indeed, some world-wide scams have been pulled using fictional blogs with stories that tug the heartstrings of readers (Bol and Locher). Often, these are scams that are used to elicit monetary donations out of readers or viewers; however, sometimes fake profiles are created out of loneliness or a pathological need to lie for attention (Bol and Locher). There are certainly ethical questions that are raised when false information is presented as true on the Internet, but the question of who the false information harms and the level and type of harm done should be the litmus test when considering whether the information presented is ethically-sound or not. If the information harms no one emotionally or financially, then the fact that information is merely untrue and placed on the Internet is not ethically-unsound; however, if the information is presented as true and harms those who believe it emotionally, financially, or otherwise, then the information is certainly ethically harmful, and should be removed.
Building one’s identity has always been the concern of adolescents. Adolescence is a time when who the individual will become is of the utmost concern; the individual is carving out his or her identity from those around him or her, including parents, friends, and so on. Social media is appealing to adolescents because it provides a platform to speak and be heard by one’s peers, and also a way to craft the identity that one presents to the world. An Instagram profile, for instance, allows the creator to show his or her peers the things that are important to him or her, and how he or she views those things. Facebook and Twitter allow the user to update his or her personal information for everyone to see. However, any information that the user does not want to share can be deleted and hidden from view; it is a selective snapshot of an individual’s life, an idealized version of the identity that the individual is cultivating. This is the reason that social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter appeal to adolescents. Once the adolescent has become accustomed to being present in social media, then the transition to adulthood and the use of social media as an adult is natural.
The need to construct an identity based on the people surrounding the individual is not a new or unique need; social media merely allows individuals a new and different method of approaching identity construction. According to Zhao, Grasmuck and Martin, social media has an ongoing presence in people’s lives because it gives people a sense of community, connectedness, and identity. Zhao, Grasmuck and Martin write, “Our results suggest that identity is not an individual characteristic; it is not an expression of something innate in a person, it is rather a social product, the outcome of a given social environment and hence performed differently in varying contexts’True selves,’ ‘real selves,’ and ‘hoped-for possible selves’ are products of different situations rather than characteristics of different individuals” (Zhao et al.). Social media allows people to create a version of their true self in the virtual world; in some cases, this may give the individual a better understanding of him or herself or provide him or her with a sense of community that he or she may have been lacking before.
Does the new presence of social media in people’s lives mean that they spend less time truly interacting with people and more time virtually interacting? Perhaps, in some cases, the answer is yes. However, social media has not taken over true interactions for most people. The benefits of social media use-- and the power it gives people over the identity they can create-- can be a powerfully positive or negative tool. The deciding factor on whether social media is positive or negative for the individual does not lie with the tool itself, but instead with the way that the individual chooses to use it.
Works cited
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