Identity in a Digital World
Discovering your identity is one thing, but finding the comfortability to express it and be your authentic self can be another challenge.
In today’s digital world, most young people have an online life on top of their offline life. Online contexts such as social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are places that young people can utilize to develop and express themselves however they so choose. Social media opens up opportunities for identity exploration, which may have been constrained in offline contexts. In a digital world, it can feel a lot more comfortable to express yourself and explore because online contexts offer different opportunities to do it such as privacy settings or the ability to be anonymous. I think this is really important because when you’re growing up, it can be really confusing finding who you are. According to Wängqvist & Frisén (2016), “with regards to sexuality, the research showed that adolescents identifying with a sexual minority felt more at ease in expressing their sexuality and connecting with others in online contexts than they did offline.”
Online contexts play an important role in identity formation today. The digital world we are all a part of gives us the ability to reconstruct our identities in anonymous contexts to both escape old social networks and access new one’s (Bozkurt & Tu, 2016). I think that this is really important because it allows for young people to have a private space in a world where it seems like someone, whether it be parents, school staff, etc., is always looking over your shoulder and watching what you’re doing. I remember when I was in middle school and one of my favorite parts of having a smartphone and access to the internet was that I could escape my mom’s watch over me and say what I really wanted to say in an online community that I felt comfortable being a part of. Online contexts like this also aid in autonomy development which is an important skill to build as a young person. Social media accounts allow young people to have complete control over their profiles which promotes autonomy and being able to independently make decisions about oneself.
“Should we teach our children as though they have two lives, or one?”
In Alec Couros TED talk about identity in a digital world, a question is proposed: “should we teach our children as though they have two lives, or one?” This is a complicated question because there are so many factors involved like safety and privacy, autonomy, comfortability, and consequences. On one hand, keeping one's personal information private from the entire world is important, as well as the consequences if one's personal information is leaked and affects their future. On the other hand, is it important that young people have the choice in how they show up online and what they do with their online profiles. These are all important factors to think about when deciding how you are going to express yourself in online settings, which in today’s world seems to be a major part of our lives. Bozkurt & Tu (2016) stated that “we create technology and technology in turn re-creates us.”
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