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Diana Venegas

English 115

Jennifer Rodrick

September 29, 2017

Technology Shaped Identities

The shaping of identity develops with the influence of experiences, and your social

environment, but with advances as great as weve had technologically, social media has become

one of the biggest influencers in the shaping of what people become like as they go through

stages of trying to find themselves. Self identity itself is too complex to narrow down to just 3

influences, but there is great evidence of technologys role in the development of lifelong

characteristics ingrained in people. With technology so heavily ingrained in our day to day life it

affects who we are in real life, and online to the point that many live a double life.

With everything so technologically oriented it gives social media all the power in the world to

dictate whats instructed to society as norms, and allows social media to set the guidelines by

which to abide to in order to achieve happiness,beauty, and popularity.Self identity is a sense of

self and conscious awareness of who you are, and what you believe in, but that is easily taken

away, and manipulated to change when social media subliminally assigns you things to believe,

and want.

Social media is not only a pastime for some people, for many it's a whole other life where

they get to be who they wish they were in real life. In the virtual world there is no penalty for

pretending to be someone youre not, and for the purpose of either good or bad many use that to

their advantage. The virtual world allows for people to develop an alter ego in which they could
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pretend everything is fine. No one posts statuses when theyre sad, or when theyve had a bad

day because they much rather post something implying that they are happy. It stems from the

sense of competition that comes with social media culture. If you can, you know to only show

the best version of yourself, and your life. Media even decides what happiness looks like, and

its all things associated with unattainable things for the common person. Achieving happiness is

only possible when you have materialistic accommodations. Happiness is depicted to be directly

correlated with money and everything that comes with it on social media.When you finally feel

satisfied with what you have, going on social media will make you feel like its not worth being

happy about because someone has it better. While sparking a sense of disatisfaction with your

life it also invalidates your feelings, and happiness. Even in relationships, friendships, family

bonds, if theyre not as good as the ones you see of other people then you no longer feel entitled

to being content with them. Social media assigns the means by which you measure how good

your relationship is, and leaves you always discontent.The small things that bring us joy lose

meaning when theyre in constant competition with the things we see on social media. So,

essentially we lose our personal outlook on what happiness is, and means to us.

Its easy to lose your sense of what makes you, you when you get too caught up trying to

be all that you think you need to be in order to gain popularity by any means. You have to be

able to set your quirks aside in order to be accepted.Instead of choosing to embrace uniqueness

social media influences you to be like everyone else.Following mainstream media means

idealizing the same social norms, and unrealistic beauty standards that long linger from the past.

Media is powerful enough to choose, and decide what to hold up to beauty standards without

being questioned. Stick skinny girls are glorified, and its what every girl wants to be even if its

unhealthy. Boys also fall victim to the insecurities inflicted by seeing the ideal male body be one
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that consists of a six pack.This stirs self hatred in those who cant be as thin, and attractive,

which can lead to the desire to be different so much that people undergo the extremes of plastic

surgery, or something as subtle as photoshopping their pictures. All the extensive burden of

altering pictures in order to gain approval from people online.Even the attractive people who

make it to having large platforms because of their looks develop insecurities tied to always

feeling pressured to be who people want them to be, and not themselves. In social media culture

its all a competition, and tearing people down if theyre better, and thats a attitude that develops

on social media platforms. Whether youre nice or not in person, while on social media everyone

is looking for something to criticize. Theres no winning because its either you satisfy yourself,

or your followers, theres a slight in between but either way it causes a never ending cycle of

discontent with oneself.

What sets most individuals apart is their personals beliefs, and their outlook on life. Its

based on our upbringing so theres large variations in the way we each perceive things. On social

media it's hard to put yourself out there, and be open about controversial topics because social

media teaches us to close off and settle for the popular opinion.Its condoned on social media to

ridicule odd people As cheesy as it is, its wrong for us to automatically categorize people when

theres so much more to people than what meets the eye, especially when our judgement is often

based off of a post or tweet.Social media is a powerful thing, and the same way it can dumb you

down it can actually educate you as well. Its possible for it to have a positive impact if you get

educated on social media, but it can just as easily make you ignorant to movements that are

looked over as a whole just because its popular mannerism to dismiss them. For example with

feminism, on social media its normalized to ridicule anyone who claims to be a feminist simply

because it has a bad stigma, and rather than finding out what the movement is for they settle for
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assuming its just crazy women that want all men to die. So essentially were not only overcome

with a sense of obligation to agree, but were stripped of self expression because you cant post

what you want, and if you do post what you want, theres a backlash of criticism from your

followers. So basically in exchange for popularity you give up your self expression. Social media

is a platform of pleasing everyone but yourself, being who they want you to be , and believing

what people want you to believe.

In conclusion social media is just another institutionalized system to mold us into a

generic human beings, and remove individualism. Unless we realize for ourselves that were well

under a grasp of control then were bound to let social media continue to dictate our lives, and

allow ourselves to be vulnerable to more extreme manipulation.Whether consciously

aware..media plays a substantial role in influencing consumption patterns.(Sabrina Worsham,

Medias Influence on Social Norms and Identity Development of Youth, personal.psu.edu,

accessed October 5, 2017) For example, large corporations benefit from people having us

influenced into having identical taste in everything because it would make it easier to market us,

and profit off of a single established liking for things.Without technology you can assume the

same mainstream ideals would be influenced, but not nearly as strongly effective. Children dont

even get to a point in their life where they have a stern sense of self before they get touched by

technology. Babies are only turning into young children when they get a hold of their first taint

of influence through media. Large corporations bid on how effective their influence is because

its beneficial. Acknowledging that it starts at the beginning of these new lives, its easy to know

that the influence is inevitable, however it could be turned into a positive one.Because self

identity isn't fixed or assigned at birth it easy to influence especially in younger populations, and

all that we really need is to have a more accepting social media community.Social media
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influences or helps shape the identities of those exposed to it in any way but the extents vary by

the individual.Self identity is the way you carry yourself based on your beliefs, but with social

media constantly altering their popular opinions it inhibits you from making having your own

fixed ideas of what happiness consists of or of what beauty is to you. No one comes out the

womb with the idea that happiness is directly aligned with having all these materialistic things,

and no one comes out the womb thinking that weight is what defines beauty. Those are things

fixed in society but that now are heavily enforced through social media. People become slaves to

social media, and drool over the lifestyles they see.Its a toxic atmosphere that promotes self hate

because of what we lack in regards to what's glorified on social media. The effects are as

psychological to the point that people obsess themselves, and live a double life of pretending as

hard as they can to make it seem like they are and have everything that social media glorifies.

People will buy an expensive item to impress their followers when in some realities they needed

that money for food. Girls, and boys will photoshop their faces or bodies to seem attractive, and

only accept validation in the form of likes, and comments. To achieve popularity people even

resort to following trends they dont even like personally. The effects of social media can be

positive ones, and there could be positive influences but it lies in our hands to understand the

power behind ourselves, and put social media to better use.

Citations:

Worsham, Sabrina, Medias Influence on Social Norms and Identity Development of

Youth,2011
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