Victoria Fernandez
Dr. Dougherty
COMM 200
8 October 2014
Media Diet: The Correlation Between Social Media and Identity
Everyday through social media use, we are creating new worlds for ourselves, where we share different features of our lives and build online documentation of ourselves that anyone is able to see. However, we often get so lost in these new worlds that we forget to stop and think about how they can influence our concept of identity. In general, the concept of identity is not an easy thing to define, it is something that continues and will continue to raise differing opinions. Some argue that social media has saved society; while others argue that it has done the opposite. Whatever the case may be, the relationship between social media and identity is something that will always remain relevant as it is shaping our every day lives as well as who we are. Personally, the role of social media in my life has heavily influenced the way in which I view myself. It has allowed me to create an entirely new identity that I am able to carefully monitor. According to John B. Thompson, an experience of life outside the media is critical to our identity and self-formation. In regards to my specific media diet, which involves dieting from social media apps on my cellphone for 72 hours, I believe that the correlation between these apps and my identity prove to influence each other. Since identity is a socially constructed concept, and most young adults spend a significantly large chunk of their day on some form of social media, it is clear that it impacts our sense of identities to some extent.
Today, whenever I am around younger generations I take a moment to watch their behavior as it relates to technology and new media. I watch as babies and young children almost instinctively grab towards their parents and older siblings cellphones, their eyes staring at the shiny screens, curiosity in their touch, and I try to think back to my childhood. Growing up, the Internet, social media, and cell phones were all foreign concepts to me. But as I got older, they became more and more relevant to my life. As the article, Is Google Making Us stupid? by Nicholas Carr states, I too feel as though something has been tinkering with my brain. I feel as though social media has changed the way it is wired, it has changed the way that I think and the way that I interact with others. With social media, I often find things out through my feeds. I don’t need to watch the latest sports game, because someone is bound to tweet updates. I don’t need to get to know somebody, because I can get to know him or her through their online persona. I don’t need to study abroad, because I can get the same experience through my friends Instagram posts. Overall, the ability to have all this information through an app is limiting my ability to actually engage in the world. It allows me to develop first impressions of people without ever actually meeting them. It is limiting my ability to think deeply, the same way Nicholas Carr explains in his article. While my case doesn’t exactly deal with Google or any other search engine, social media works in a similar way as it provides me with information without having to do any work, or any thinking for that matter. During the three-day period in which I didn’t have immediate access to social media through my cellphone, I felt as if I was not as ‘in the know’ as I normally was. Normally, if I wanted to know what my friends were doing or if I wanted to know if anything interesting was going on either in the world or among my circle of friends, I would just check my social medias. However, not having this option was definitely difficult to get used to. I often scrolled through the pages of my iPhone, searching for the Snapchat app to check my friend’s stories, or my Instagram feed to see if anyone posted anything recently, only to remember that I had deleted them. By the end of day three, the last day, I was finally getting used to the limited access to social media, and I was no longer checking for apps that weren’t there.
Often times, when it comes to new media and more specifically social media, society is quick to box it into a category of all negatives. We spend too much time on the Internet, thus it’s the Internets fault. We get distracted too easily, thus phones are the enemy. We place too much care on our online personas, thus social media is the enemy. However, we fail to take into account that it is not new media at fault but rather we are to blame. New media and advancement in technology is inevitable, it is what should be happening in an advancing society. In the Ted Talk, A Year Offline, by Paul Miller, he brought up this very point. At the age of 26, Miller was overwhelmed with social media and the Internet and felt that he needed to be more productive with his time, so he took off an entire year to do so. However, although the experience was initially rewarding and allowed him to feel as he stated, “high on life,” eventually he realized that first, he needed the internet and social media to interact with people easier and to keep up with relevant news, and second, media is not to blame for societies inability to be productive, we are to blame. One point in particular that really stuck out to me in the talk was his comparison of his Internet use to his parents Internet use. He explained how his parents used the internet for utility, they used it for things like checking their emails, buying things on amazon, and work responsibilities, whereas he used the internet for just about anything, especially out of boredom. This was very relevant in my case in that I feel the same way. My parents both use the Internet mostly for the necessities. My mom uses it to buy things online, to check her emails and to stay in contact with people; although my mom does have a Facebook, it is a very small portion of her life. The same goes for my dad whom uses the Internet even less than my mom and only ever uses it for work purposes. Miller described the feeling of leaving the internet as a feeling of freedom, “the sensation of a 15 year old saying you can’t tell me what to do,” this is the same feeling that I had when I deleted my social media apps. I felt as if I was on top of the world, and that nobody could tell me what to do. I felt strong in my ability to boycott social media apps and I felt as though I could now actively engage in activities at a much higher level. However, just like Miller, I realized that this original feeling of sensation is not permanent. I too realized that the Internet was not the problem, but rather what I chose to do with it. Through dieting my use of social media apps, I was able to gain a better sense of who I am; I realized that I must take accountability for my levels of productivity and stop blaming social media and technology. My addiction to the world of social media is more about who I am and less about what I’m using to get there. I came to the conclusion that I should never completely block myself from the Internet, but that I should gain the ability to have power over the Internet instead of letting it have power over me.
Instead of separating new media with society, my media diet has taught me to combine the two. Nearly everything we do is so dependent upon technology, that we have actually become a part of it. As the video, “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” tries to describe, the Internet is merely a blank canvas and humans give it form and meaning. By deleting my social media apps for three days, I was able to realize this in a way that I never had before. It allowed me to take a step back from my cell phone, and view it as just a machine. New media and the technology in which we use it on are neither the enemy nor the savior. Society has a tendency to blame our inability to think, our inability to engage in conversation, our inability to go a day without updating our twitter feed etc., on the media itself rather than on the supreme machines (the human race) behind the screen. Social media allows us to brand ourselves and to show people what we wish to show them, which I take as a beneficial aspect in that society should not have access to all parts of who we are. One of my favorite quotes--“I don't like anyone knowing anything about me that I didn't choose to tell them”—actually sums up my point perfectly. Ann Aguirre, the writer of this quote, expresses that people shouldn’t know everything about us; they should know the parts that we choose to show them. This should be true of our social media personas as well. However, through my media diet, I realized that by trying to shape myself into the person I want to be online, it is actually helping me become that person in real life. I have realized that my online persona and my physical real-world persona are starting to become one in that just like the video suggested, humans and machines are not separate entities or at least shouldn’t be separate entities. In a personal sense, I took this to mean that although the social media world and the real world may be completely different and seem to have no shared characteristics, humans actually work with these mediums in a way that allow them to become part of who we are.
All in all, media dieting was not something I was previously familiar with and I was honestly not looking forward to it. I felt as though I already knew everything there was to know about new media, and that nothing was ever going to change my mind about the subject. However, my three-day social media diet proved me wrong. Through this diet I was able to learn that social media has actually influenced my identity and the way in which I view myself in many ways. It made me realize that because of social media, I am much less likely to spend time thinking about things or actively putting myself out there in that information is so easily accessible in other ways via social media. I was also able to learn that societies relationship with social media and our inability to be productive the way we want to be is not the fault of social media or technology, but rather our mindset on the matter. We must learn that the internet does not control us, it does not force us to use it or to become easily distracted, that is completely our doing; and finally, this diet has taught me that overall social media has become a part of me. I have concluded that there is no sense in trying to separate myself from social media in that it has helped in shaping myself into the person I wish I were.
Dr. Dougherty
COMM 200
8 October 2014
Media Diet: The Correlation Between Social Media and Identity
Everyday through social media use, we are creating new worlds for ourselves, where we share different features of our lives and build online documentation of ourselves that anyone is able to see. However, we often get so lost in these new worlds that we forget to stop and think about how they can influence our concept of identity. In general, the concept of identity is not an easy thing to define, it is something that continues and will continue to raise differing opinions. Some argue that social media has saved society; while others argue that it has done the opposite. Whatever the case may be, the relationship between social media and identity is something that will always remain relevant as it is shaping our every day lives as well as who we are. Personally, the role of social media in my life has heavily influenced the way in which I view myself. It has allowed me to create an entirely new identity that I am able to carefully monitor. According to John B. Thompson, an experience of life outside the media is critical to our identity and self-formation. In regards to my specific media diet, which involves dieting from social media apps on my cellphone for 72 hours, I believe that the correlation between these apps and my identity prove to influence each other. Since identity is a socially constructed concept, and most young adults spend a significantly large chunk of their day on some form of social media, it is clear that it impacts our sense of identities to some extent.
Today, whenever I am around younger generations I take a moment to watch their behavior as it relates to technology and new media. I watch as babies and young children almost instinctively grab towards their parents and older siblings cellphones, their eyes staring at the shiny screens, curiosity in their touch, and I try to think back to my childhood. Growing up, the Internet, social media, and cell phones were all foreign concepts to me. But as I got older, they became more and more relevant to my life. As the article, Is Google Making Us stupid? by Nicholas Carr states, I too feel as though something has been tinkering with my brain. I feel as though social media has changed the way it is wired, it has changed the way that I think and the way that I interact with others. With social media, I often find things out through my feeds. I don’t need to watch the latest sports game, because someone is bound to tweet updates. I don’t need to get to know somebody, because I can get to know him or her through their online persona. I don’t need to study abroad, because I can get the same experience through my friends Instagram posts. Overall, the ability to have all this information through an app is limiting my ability to actually engage in the world. It allows me to develop first impressions of people without ever actually meeting them. It is limiting my ability to think deeply, the same way Nicholas Carr explains in his article. While my case doesn’t exactly deal with Google or any other search engine, social media works in a similar way as it provides me with information without having to do any work, or any thinking for that matter. During the three-day period in which I didn’t have immediate access to social media through my cellphone, I felt as if I was not as ‘in the know’ as I normally was. Normally, if I wanted to know what my friends were doing or if I wanted to know if anything interesting was going on either in the world or among my circle of friends, I would just check my social medias. However, not having this option was definitely difficult to get used to. I often scrolled through the pages of my iPhone, searching for the Snapchat app to check my friend’s stories, or my Instagram feed to see if anyone posted anything recently, only to remember that I had deleted them. By the end of day three, the last day, I was finally getting used to the limited access to social media, and I was no longer checking for apps that weren’t there.
Often times, when it comes to new media and more specifically social media, society is quick to box it into a category of all negatives. We spend too much time on the Internet, thus it’s the Internets fault. We get distracted too easily, thus phones are the enemy. We place too much care on our online personas, thus social media is the enemy. However, we fail to take into account that it is not new media at fault but rather we are to blame. New media and advancement in technology is inevitable, it is what should be happening in an advancing society. In the Ted Talk, A Year Offline, by Paul Miller, he brought up this very point. At the age of 26, Miller was overwhelmed with social media and the Internet and felt that he needed to be more productive with his time, so he took off an entire year to do so. However, although the experience was initially rewarding and allowed him to feel as he stated, “high on life,” eventually he realized that first, he needed the internet and social media to interact with people easier and to keep up with relevant news, and second, media is not to blame for societies inability to be productive, we are to blame. One point in particular that really stuck out to me in the talk was his comparison of his Internet use to his parents Internet use. He explained how his parents used the internet for utility, they used it for things like checking their emails, buying things on amazon, and work responsibilities, whereas he used the internet for just about anything, especially out of boredom. This was very relevant in my case in that I feel the same way. My parents both use the Internet mostly for the necessities. My mom uses it to buy things online, to check her emails and to stay in contact with people; although my mom does have a Facebook, it is a very small portion of her life. The same goes for my dad whom uses the Internet even less than my mom and only ever uses it for work purposes. Miller described the feeling of leaving the internet as a feeling of freedom, “the sensation of a 15 year old saying you can’t tell me what to do,” this is the same feeling that I had when I deleted my social media apps. I felt as if I was on top of the world, and that nobody could tell me what to do. I felt strong in my ability to boycott social media apps and I felt as though I could now actively engage in activities at a much higher level. However, just like Miller, I realized that this original feeling of sensation is not permanent. I too realized that the Internet was not the problem, but rather what I chose to do with it. Through dieting my use of social media apps, I was able to gain a better sense of who I am; I realized that I must take accountability for my levels of productivity and stop blaming social media and technology. My addiction to the world of social media is more about who I am and less about what I’m using to get there. I came to the conclusion that I should never completely block myself from the Internet, but that I should gain the ability to have power over the Internet instead of letting it have power over me.
Instead of separating new media with society, my media diet has taught me to combine the two. Nearly everything we do is so dependent upon technology, that we have actually become a part of it. As the video, “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” tries to describe, the Internet is merely a blank canvas and humans give it form and meaning. By deleting my social media apps for three days, I was able to realize this in a way that I never had before. It allowed me to take a step back from my cell phone, and view it as just a machine. New media and the technology in which we use it on are neither the enemy nor the savior. Society has a tendency to blame our inability to think, our inability to engage in conversation, our inability to go a day without updating our twitter feed etc., on the media itself rather than on the supreme machines (the human race) behind the screen. Social media allows us to brand ourselves and to show people what we wish to show them, which I take as a beneficial aspect in that society should not have access to all parts of who we are. One of my favorite quotes--“I don't like anyone knowing anything about me that I didn't choose to tell them”—actually sums up my point perfectly. Ann Aguirre, the writer of this quote, expresses that people shouldn’t know everything about us; they should know the parts that we choose to show them. This should be true of our social media personas as well. However, through my media diet, I realized that by trying to shape myself into the person I want to be online, it is actually helping me become that person in real life. I have realized that my online persona and my physical real-world persona are starting to become one in that just like the video suggested, humans and machines are not separate entities or at least shouldn’t be separate entities. In a personal sense, I took this to mean that although the social media world and the real world may be completely different and seem to have no shared characteristics, humans actually work with these mediums in a way that allow them to become part of who we are.
All in all, media dieting was not something I was previously familiar with and I was honestly not looking forward to it. I felt as though I already knew everything there was to know about new media, and that nothing was ever going to change my mind about the subject. However, my three-day social media diet proved me wrong. Through this diet I was able to learn that social media has actually influenced my identity and the way in which I view myself in many ways. It made me realize that because of social media, I am much less likely to spend time thinking about things or actively putting myself out there in that information is so easily accessible in other ways via social media. I was also able to learn that societies relationship with social media and our inability to be productive the way we want to be is not the fault of social media or technology, but rather our mindset on the matter. We must learn that the internet does not control us, it does not force us to use it or to become easily distracted, that is completely our doing; and finally, this diet has taught me that overall social media has become a part of me. I have concluded that there is no sense in trying to separate myself from social media in that it has helped in shaping myself into the person I wish I were.