Social Media & Self Identity

Social media has rapidly become one of the most critical things in daily life for many teenagers, as well as many adults too, and is seen as a quick, easy way to communicate and connect with people all over the world. However it could be argued that this increase in users is not necessarily a good thing due to teenage dominated platforms such as Tiktok, where misinformation and hate can be rapidly spread. The average person uses any type of Social Media platform for about 2 hours and 24 minutes per day.

So, how does this contribute to self identity? Well, Social Media has a growing importance in self identity due to the large amount of impressionable young adolescents who are learning to express themselves. Due to it's growing acceptance of new things, social media enables self identity expression, exploration and experimentation; something natural for the human experience. Often, we express ourselves online both through texts and posts.

In recent years, social media apps dominated by teenagers have popularised the term and usage of 'neopronouns'. Derived from pronouns assigned to male (he/him) and females (she/her), neopronouns such as they/them, it/its and xe/xir are often used by those who don't feel comfortable expressing themselves with binary pronouns. This is a new form of self identification is quickly becoming 'the norm' online, with many areas of society beginning to implement inclusion for users of neopronouns. However, with the new progression being made by society, there comes a certain type of character that intends to hurt and mock users of neopronouns. 'Xenopronouns' originated from 4chan and are noun//nounself pronouns used to challenge the inclusion of neopronouns. Whilst attempting to reclaim neopronouns and change their meaning into something positive, so far has been unsuccessful as many people do not want to accept the idea of noun/nounself referral. There are limitations the role of social media plays in self identification, as identity is also influenced by society and the environment in which a person grew up.

As many platforms gained more attraction, cyberbullying began to increase as an issue, resulting in platforms with very little guidelines, such as Twitter and Facebook, to become 'toxic'. Trolling someone on these types of platforms is much easier and accessible due to the lack of consequence, with 84% of teens being on social media and 62% using it daily, it is becoming increasingly more dangerous as the audience for these apps grows. Social media can be very damaging to mental health, especially when becoming target to hate/rejection - it is very easy for others to follow the opinion of one person on social media to fit in, lest they're the next target for cyberbullying.

Going hand in hand with damaging mental health, apps like Instagram promote others to share their lifestyle via images, videos and temporary 24 hour stories. Whist this may seem like a positive side of social media, many people (including word famous celebrities such as the Kardashians and Ariana Grande) have been called out for their extensive body editing by both fans and online magazines. These controversies have been so damaging due to these celebrities being recognised as ideal influencers who many people attempt to look like in order to conform to beauty standards. This often pressures young people to capture the perfect moment online and have the perfect body to raise self esteem, when in fact it is damaging self esteem and creating mental battles for young adolescents.