• How Does Social Media Change The Way We Construct Identity?

How does the social media change the way we construct identity?

Social media shapes people’s perspective, constructs people’s identity and, affects how people see them in today’s world. Most people live in a virtual world they created on social media, but in reality they are not the same people. It could become hard to differentiate the fake identity from the real identity of the people based on their social media profiles. Social media changes people’s opinions towards other people. For example, the more followers a person has on social media, the more respect the person will get in public. The three factors that change the way people construct their identities on social media are based on how they see their ideal self, not their real self,

In the world of social media, perception is everything (Green, 2013). “As research suggests, your “real self” is what you are - your attributes, your characteristics, and your personality. Your “ideal self” is what you feel you should be; much of it due to societal and environmental influences” (Green, 2013). People present their ideal selves to the public just to show the public that they have perfect lives. Girls on social media sites Photoshop their pictures to make them look skinny and also filter their faces to look pretty. It is an illusion that they have created to make themselves feel the way they want to appear to the world. Social media causes jealousy among people. “Jealousy is a very normal and instinctual feeling," says Saliha Afridi, clinical psychologist and managing director of The Light House Arabia (Healy, 2016). According to Afridi, globalization and social media connect people so much that it could lead to comparative behavior (Healy, 2016). With the many images of people combined with the culture of people makes them feel less than or not the whole will trigger people’s deepest insecurities and it could lead to envy and jealously and not seeing their real self (Healy, 2016). Before the popularity of social media, people were comparing themselves to immediate social circles like friends, neighbors

The amount of likes a person get will determine how much respect will get in the society. People measure their success by the amount of followers and like they get on social medias. People’s life success does not equate with the number of contacts or likes people may receive on social media. The happy pictures that people post on social media is not even the portion of their whole life and it is not actually reflecting their life reality but barely a glimpse of their life they chosen to present (Gummow, 2014). If people have a lot going on and everything they post on social media seem perfect and they are make the audience to think that they are living a perfect life and they are lucky but in reality there life are as complicated as everyone else. People get addicted for being famous on social media when their life have lack of excitement and to fulfill their inner self they want to get involve on social media and would care how many followers and likes they get. People have been getting their peers approval but in today’s world social media made it quantify (Donnelly, 2016). “In 2016, being popular means the most Instagram followers, Facebook friends and likes” (Donnelly, 2016). Zoe a 16 years-old living in LA said, “The popularity contest — it’s never been a good thing — and now we have the actual numbers, we’ve become greedy. We want more attention ” (Donnelly, 2016). People, mostly girls post