When I was about 16, I deleted my Instagram account and made a new one. My posts over the previous four years didn’t reflect the person I had become, and I had hundreds of connections with people that I hadn’t spoken to in years. Seven years later, this second account is made up of posts that don’t reflect who I am, and I have hundreds of connections with people that I haven’t spoken to in years. And yet, I continue to post on this account. Posts that I shamefully care way too much about. For what purpose?
Instagram – as with most other social media platforms – was designed for people to share what was happening in their lives with the people they know. I was speaking to a friend recently about how people our age have come to use Instagram. He’s 21 and hasn’t used the app in years, nor any other social media for that matter. He was telling me how his Instagram shows the kind of things we used to share on the app; new haircuts, sport wins, pets doing funny things. Moments captured and left unfiltered. Studies performed since the advent of social media show that we subconsciously adapt our profiles and tailor our personas to fit our desired digital identities.
Nowadays, social media presence is so artificial, particularly that of young people. We post carefully curated albums instead of single images. Photos of ourselves extracted from a collection of 300 photos taken at dinner. We send images to our friends first for advice on which photos are better than others. We ponder what to caption our posts for hours, seeking the perfect balance between funny, clever and original. We dig through hundreds of songs to find the perfect soundtrack for the 10 seconds our followers will spend viewing the post. And what time should we post at? When people are on their way to work in the morning or settling in for the evening? When will we score the most engagement?
My Identity(ies)
My Instagram doesn’t reflect much about me at all, despite posting albums of photos every month or so. I’m a humorous person, but my Instagram doesn’t show that. I create and sell art in my spare time, but my Instagram doesn’t show that. I’m bilingual, but my Instagram doesn’t show that. I love poetry, but my Instagram doesn’t show that. I study law, but my Instagram doesn’t show that. Family is the most important part of my life, but my Instagram doesn’t show that. Who is she? I don’t recognise her. As posited by Gripsrud, “what is unique about ourselves, what makes our own experiences, emotions and moods special and not necessarily easy to share with others” (Gripsrud, 2010). This certainly rings true.
I want to add that it’s not just this identity that we perform on our Instagram profiles. Some days, I have no interest in being on my phone at all. It will stay beside my bed untouched while I reconnect with the non-digital. As healing as this is, the digital is still defining my identity on these days. I am actively avoiding technology and conscious of the fact that I am doing so. I become she who is without her phone, without technology, going against the norm and being in the non-digital. The act of spending the day disconnected is notable only because I clock that I am doing so.
Even on days where I don’t open Instagram and instead spend my train ride home maintaining my Duolingo streak, I am performing yet another digital identity. I become a girl who prioritising her education, despite the only takeaway from that lesson being how to tell someone in Dutch that I am not a banana, should there ever be any confusion.
Our identities are defined by our interactions with the digital each day. As social media departs from its intended purposes more and more each day, it begs the question: Is what we put online actually a reflection of who we are, or rather who we want people to think we are?
Sources:
https://morethandigital.info/en/social-media-through-the-years-a-25-year-timeline/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170411130754.htm
https://medium.com/publishous/the-real-reason-people-hide-their-authentic-selves-online-6574b0692d97
https://francesca1015.medium.com/social-media-the-practices-of-identity-and-digital-exploitation-7fe78b6eed79
Gripsrud, J. (2010). Understanding Media Culture. Published by Bloomsbury Academy.
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