TimmyHThe "Facebook" Identity
May 6th 2008 04:28
While most users of social networking sites opt to "keep it real", their majority is diminishing. New research released last week from "Next Great Thing", an internet survey site which tracks trends in global youth culture, shows that 44% of users create a different identity on the web.
This suggests that young people are using the web to explore different concepts of the "self". Images, phrases and friends all influence the perception of a person online, as in real life, but the selective nature of this information in the online environment means that users are exploring different personalities, which are easily changeable in real time.
Social development through social networking sites in fact allows young people to create multiple personalities and change quickly between these, which may in future years prove to be an integral part of human development. Selection of images, applications and friends on facebook all allow for personal control over identity and even the manipulation of perception. young people are developing these as skills.
The "mistakes" people make socially in real life are easily avoided in cyber-space. The time which can to taken to read and interpret correspondence before responding means that users are able to craft conversation over days or weeks that in real life might have taken mere seconds. Interestingly although much of the praise for the internet has been that it provides an outlet for instantaneous information, in terms of social networking it also allows users to delay conversation when necessary, as with text messaging.
The ability of social networking users to source others with similar interests whilst keeping these separate from their "real life" identities is an interesting phenomenon which will no doubt only become more of an issue in the years to come.
This suggests that young people are using the web to explore different concepts of the "self". Images, phrases and friends all influence the perception of a person online, as in real life, but the selective nature of this information in the online environment means that users are exploring different personalities, which are easily changeable in real time.
Social development through social networking sites in fact allows young people to create multiple personalities and change quickly between these, which may in future years prove to be an integral part of human development. Selection of images, applications and friends on facebook all allow for personal control over identity and even the manipulation of perception. young people are developing these as skills.
The "mistakes" people make socially in real life are easily avoided in cyber-space. The time which can to taken to read and interpret correspondence before responding means that users are able to craft conversation over days or weeks that in real life might have taken mere seconds. Interestingly although much of the praise for the internet has been that it provides an outlet for instantaneous information, in terms of social networking it also allows users to delay conversation when necessary, as with text messaging.
The ability of social networking users to source others with similar interests whilst keeping these separate from their "real life" identities is an interesting phenomenon which will no doubt only become more of an issue in the years to come.
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