Venegas 1

Diana Venegas

English 115

Jennifer Rodrick

December 9, 2017

Technology Shaped Identities

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

environment. In past times those were the most crucial components to crafting our identity but

with advances in technology, social media has become one of the biggest influencers in the

shaping process of our identities.Self identity is a sense of self and conscious awareness of who

you are, and what you believe in.Everyone is unique, and 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 truly are, and who we pretend to be. In a

vicious society where competition is in every corner, social media has the negative impact of

stripping us of our identity, and in subliminal ways assigns us one.

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.

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

pretend everything is fine. No one posts statuses when theyre sad, or when theyve had a bad
 Venegas 2

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 dissatisfaction 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 in between all the unattainable aspirations we lose our ability to see the negative

impact social media has.

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
 Venegas 3

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.The influence of social media to

me seems similar to the toxic influence of the beauty myth. In the book The Beauty Myth the

author Naomi Wolf states The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not

appearance.(14) That statement is true to both The Beauty Myth, and the influence of social

media. It correlates to assigning us what to look like, but more specifically assigns toxic behavior

to one self. It sends the message that we are not good enough as we are, and must pursue varying

actions to achieve a good enough self. 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.Its a bad influence to have a platform that truly only triggers 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
 Venegas 4

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

based off of a post or tweet.I mostly see only negative side effects of becoming a slave to social

media, but however I do acknowledge that social media is a powerful thing. As easily as 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 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 of acceptance in the virtual 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.

Overall, as if social media couldn't show more bad tendencies,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.In an article by Sabrina Worsham, she states thatWhether consciously

aware..media plays a substantial role in influencing consumption patterns.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
 Venegas 5

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.

In conclusion, 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 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
 Venegas 6

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.

Works Cited

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

Youth,2011

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

Youth, personal.psu.edu, accessed October 5, 2017)