The digital world in which we live has changed the way we communicate at the interpersonal level. Specifically, the use of the social media platform Instagram and the video game platform Second Life have changed the way we present ourselves to the people around us. The ways in which we perform and communicate our identities in the digital world on these mediums does not benefit us because the way we perform our identities on Instagram and Second Life are far more superficial than the ways we perform our identities in real life.
Instagram today is used in a way that makes people try to make themselves appear the most ideal to the people they are communicating with. People will post things only for the purpose of getting likes and therefore might perform an identity that they feel will command the most interest and likes from their peers. Utilizing the platform in this way shows how Instagram changes the way we communicate with ourselves and our peers in a superficial way.
Via the video game Second Life, people are able to completely change their identity in the digital world. Because of this, the user of Second Life completely changes the way they would communicate in real life because they have a completely different identity. The use of an avatar in this situation changes a person’s name, appearance, and personality. With an altered identity, the user of Second Life changes everything about themselves including the way they communicate.
Changing ourselves on the internet via the platforms of Second Life and Instagram is superficial because the digital relationships that we acquire do not have the same impact as the relationships we acquire in real life. The book Alone Together by Sherry Turkle supports this claim because it takes effort to keep up the performance of our online identity instead of being ourselves. Turkle writes in her book, “Online we easily find company but are exhausted by the pressures of performance” (Turkle, 280). A reason that a person who performs their identity in the digital world cannot have their digital relationships translate to the real world is it is easier to perform more extreme identities in the digital world than in the real world. It takes too much effort to appear in real life how we make ourselves appear in the digital world. Another example that Turkle uses in her book is that someone can brag about how many friends they have on Facebook but in reality, they admit that they have fewer friends than ever before. This shows the idea of people changing the way they communicate on social media in order to appear a certain way. On Instagram the same argument can be made about followers. A person can make themselves appear popular on the internet if they have a large number of followers even if they struggle to make real friends in the real world.
In an interview titled Sherry Turkle of MIT: How Social Media Impacts Your Identity, Turkle further explains the impact of social media on the identity. Turkle states that we have different versions of ourselves for each of our different digital spaces, “Each time we perform ourselves in each of these spaces, we actually learn something new about ourselves because each of these places is a place where we are performing a different aspect of ourselves, and thus it’s a kind of self-reflective exercise in a way” (Turkle). The way we perform ourselves differently depending on what space we are in and performing multiple versions of ourselves in this way leads to performance exhaustion which does not benefit us in real life. For instance, the way a person performs themselves on Instagram is most likely different from the way they perform themselves on Second Life. With each way that we perform ourselves differently, we communicate differently. Not only do we communicate differently in the digital world versus the real world but we communicate differently depending on what digital space we are in.
The idea of performing our identities that Turkle references in an idea that comes from Erving Goffman and his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. In his book, Goffman argues that all social interaction is a performance in order to manage the impressions of other people (Goffman). In the digital world the central idea of impression management is taken even farther than it is in the real world. In the real-world people try to make ourselves appear in the best light. In the digital world users of Instagram and Second Life completely change themselves to give the illusion that they appear the exact way they would like to appear. A person changing themselves via an avatar in Second Life is an example of how a person performs their identity far more intensely in the digital world, which does not benefit them outside of that digital space.
A reason that a person would want to change their identity so intensely is because they are not comfortable with who they are or have some kind of extenuating circumstance that hurts the way they are perceived by society. People who deal with stigma are likely candidates of trying to change their identities in the digital world. In Goffman’s book, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Goffman writes about the idea of stigma and those who are considered abnormal. People in these situations do not have full social acceptance and are trying to constantly adjust their social identities. Stigmatized people often create symbols that are used as “disidentifiers” in order for others to perceive them as normal (Goffman). In the digital world the creation of “disidentifiers” is limitless due to the ability for people to perform themselves in any way that they want. With the use of Second Life and avatars, the stigmatized are able to be a different person and change who they are. This helps create digital relationships however, the person is hiding their stigmatization instead of accepting who they are. This does not help them in the real world and the person will have to hide any signs of stigmatization and avoid close relationships for the superficial idea that they think they will not be accepted by others.
Even those who do not have to deal with stigma change their identities, behavior, and communication online in the attempt to gain the approval of others. Douglas Rushkoff’s work Social Media and the Perils of Looking For Likes, highlights the idea of how certain actions command more interest than others. Instagram is an example of this because the photos that generate more interest and likes are not organic. The content posted by influencers and celebrities in many instances are produced for the purpose of advertisement and portraying an image. This makes Instagram users change how they behave and communicate with others so that what they post and how they present themselves can be popular and get a lot of likes and views even if how they are portraying themselves is not organic. It is also a point that people changing themselves in the pursuit of likes may not be aware of the negative effects portraying themselves in this way will cause. Rushkoff states, “Our social media platforms are embedded with values that shape our perspectives and our behaviors. If we live in the social media landscape without an awareness of what it really wants from us, no one is really being empowered at all” (Rushkoff). Changing themselves in this way is superficial and mostly does not correlate with how we would behave if we were not incentivized by the likes.
In today’s virtual world we can be free from our bodies, but not from identity. In Douglass Rushkoff’s book Program or be Programmed Ten Commands for a Digital Age, Rushkoff argues that we should portray ourselves as our true selves online so that we will be accountable for our actions online. Because of this reality, we have a unique ability to reshape our identity to anything we want, and also operate anonymously and outside the restrictions of civil society (Rushkoff). Due to the anonymity of the internet people perform their identities in a way that makes it appear as though their actions do not have consequences. Trolling and hate speech on platforms such as Instagram are possible because of this anonymity. This is not beneficial to people in the real world or people in the digital world because this creates hostile communication situations. The communication between people online is altered by the anonymity of the internet because people are more likely to say mean and destructive things when there will likely not be the same consequences that would occur if the communication had taken place in the real world.
Interpersonally the way we communicate has changed in a way that does not benefit us due to platforms such as Instagram and Second Life. The ways in which we perform and communicate our identities in the digital world on these mediums does not benefit us because the way we perform our identities on Instagram and Second Life are far more superficial than the ways we perform our identities in real life. The communication that takes place in this context is altered because of this.
Works Cited
Goffman, Ervin. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth, 1978.
Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Managment of Spoiled Identity. Penguin Books, 1974.
Rushkoff, Douglas. Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. Soft Skull Press, 2011.
Rushkoff, Douglas. “Social Media and the Perils of Looking for ‘Likes’.” Rushkoff, 19 Feb. 2014, rushkoff.com/social-media-and-the-perils-of-looking-for-likes/.
Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, 2017.
Turkle, Sherry. “Sherry Turkle of MIT: How Social Media Impacts to Your Identity (Part 2).” We First Branding, 6 Oct. 2014, http://www.wefirstbranding.com/books/sherry-turkle-of-mit-how-social-media-impacts-to-your-identity-part-2/.
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