Social Media and Identity: Critical Essay

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In our everyday lives, we see our sense of how we are based on our social groups. Through various social media outlets like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and many others. It is how we tend to perceive ourselves toward others. As these groups tend to be the source of self-esteem and pride.

The majority of the youth majorly rely on social media in developing their social lives, they will tend to build their relationships, and within their networks, they get informed about any social activities. There are so many social media outlets out there that allow a user to update statuses. These social media may include WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. Everyone is different and not all are on the same social group. Frequent updating of statuses tends to put us in our own social groups. Our statuses tend to group us. These statuses may either be in the form of photos or texts. Thus, this tends to maintain social connections. In linking photos, which includes sharing and tagging of photos, which is a form of social approbation, we young people tend to regain and maintain social connections. These exchanges tend to community binding together and also may lead to social anxiety as this may lead to young people feeling secluded by the comparisons in this exchange.

On my Facebook page, I looked at my friends’ statuses and compared theirs to mine. Like for example, I take an example of selfies. In our generation, selfies are a norm in all of our social media outlets. Most of my friends were posting fun selfies and what caught my eye was the number of likes they were gaining. This got me thinking and almost led me to social pressures where I try posting fun selfies and trying as much as possible to garner the most likes. This also led to the lowering of my self-esteem. And yet we are in the same group that is age and gender. Looking at my friend’s timelines, social media was exposing me to the ‘perfection’ of my friends’ lives.

Facebook, being one of the biggest social media outlets, has used the principles of social identity theory, which was first put forth by Leon Festinger in 1954. In the USA, Facebook tends to display social identity by covering all principles of social categorization and comparison. Facebook allowing new users to create profiles tend to enable them to join the group. Self-customizing your profile so s to fit in certain groups of interest. For example, I post a post relating to a certain celebrity and one of my friends on Facebook likes my post. With the liking of my post, it tends to appear in his friends’ timelines who see the sense in my post and like to my post. He/she tends to visit my profile to view my interests. He/she sends a request which I accept when I see that our interests match. Thus, this leads to a social tie and reaffirms our identity and being active users of Facebook. This is just an example of one user. In the USA alone, it’s believed that there are about 150 million Facebook users, so in a matter of time, you would be in a huge social group with so many members. Thus, in the USA my posts and my friends’ posts clearly state the social identity as an American identity.

Different statuses tend to interconnect with issues like race, class, gender disparity, and deviance. Race the difference in one’s color skin has been brought about by the posting of different statuses leading to social ununiformed or one part of the society with the same race feeling undermined. Posting of statuses also led to subdividing themselves into certain classes, mostly financial capability classes. Social identity being promoted by the posting of statuses has also brought issues like one sex feeling like underdogs to the other genders. It also interconnects with the come behaviors that do not conform to the set-up code of conduct, thus bringing deviance.

In social identity, in putting the use of the social identity theory, social media isn’t a bad trend, but how someone uses the three concepts to make use of social media. Fewer issues would rise and more social groups would be formed. Thus, the social connection among people would be better. One should view social comparison, one of the elements in the theory as one that evaluates himself from his peers, not creating ‘perfection’ in our lives.

References

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N.B. Ellison, C. Steinfield, C. Lampe. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook “Friends”: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12 (4) (2007), pp. 1143-1168, 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x.
Nicholas Jackson. (2011). Infographic: The American Identity According to Social Media. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/infographic-the-american-identity-according-to-social-media/243687/
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