The Effect Of Social Media On Self-Presentation Of Self

According to Psychologist Dr. Jim Taylor, the world of social media today is transforming self discovery from a process of knowing thyself to rather showing thyself.(Taylor: online). Your online persona, or rather social media profile, can in many ways be viewed as a form of self-presentation. Self-presentation, which is “the conscious or unconscious process by which people try to influence the perception of their image”, is not only natural, but also takes place in the offline world through social interactions (Junco : 111). We have a perceived images of ourselves and we want to communicate to the outside world and ensure that other people see us as we view ourselves. On social media we view our profiles as a representation of who we are.

Thus your ideas of self develop through time because we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. Festinger goes on to say that self comparison takes place because people have the need for self-evaluation and they evaluate themselves by comparing their appearance and abilities with these of other people. (). Social comparison can be defined as “comparative judgments of social stimuli on particular content dimensions” (). Thus by comparing ourselves to other we re-evaluate our own identity and ultimately achieve affirmation. It is important however to realise that social comparison can then take place in either upward or downward comparison. (). Social media is in essence driven by social comparison. Balick claims that this is the nature of the social network, as in many ways it “aids and “abets a superficial way of judging both others and the self.”” (Balick). We are constantly scrolling through the virtual lives of other people and whether we realise it or not we are often comparing our lives to those that fill op our social media feed. We upload things about ourselves online mostly for others to view and we then rely on the network of people online to accept or reject our content. With social media we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, it becomes an unconscious action. Not only on what you post on social media and how many likes your post can get but also by what you are exposed to, mindlessly