According to a study [pdf] by The Children’s Digital Media Center in The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, teenagers are using social networking sites to create idealized versions of themselves.
Researcher and study co-author, Adriana Manago, says:
“You can manifest your ideal self. You can manifest who you want to be and then try to grow into that. We’re always engaging in self-presentation; we’re always trying to put our best foot forward. Social networking sites take this to a whole new level. You can change what you look like, you can Photoshop your face, you can select only the pictures that show you in a perfect lighting. These websites intensify the ability to present yourself in a positive light and explore different aspects of your personality and how you present yourself. You can try on different things, possible identities, and explore in a way that is common for emerging adulthood. It becomes psychologically real. People put up something that they would like to become — not completely different from who they are but maybe a little different — and the more it gets reflected off of others, the more it may be integrated into their sense of self as they share words and photos with so many people.”
Her co-author, Patricia Greenfield, says that, like a mirror or a suit:
“Social networking sites are a tool for self-development . . . In the arena of identity formation, this makes people more individualistic and more narcissistic; people sculpt themselves with their profiles. In the arena of peer relations, I worry that the meaning of ‘friends’ has been so altered that real friends are not going to be recognized as such. How many of your 1,000 ‘friends’ do you see in person? How many are just distant acquaintances? How many have you never met?”
Adds Manago:
“Instead of connecting with friends with whom you have close ties for the sake of the exchange itself, people interact with their ‘friends’ as a performance, as if on a stage before an audience of people on the network.”
So, just as for the dandy, all the world is a stage. Our so-called friends are just viewers watching the spectacle of our lives. We are artists but our art is ourselves. The internet, like a mirror, is a laboratory in which we experiment with and create ourselves, measure reactions and develop future personality techs.
We are detached, cold things; watching people watch us. Like Beau Brummel, we look straight at the world out of the corner of our eyes.
But c’mon . . . Tell us something we didn’t already know.
