Realms of my Being: Instagram and Identity

We begin to reshape our own beliefs based on how people respond to them. Olivia, 18, New Jersey.

I’ve spent nine years on Instagram. In that time I’ve:

A. Owned seven accounts.

B. Made important decisions about my life via poll.

C. Met some of my best friends.

D. Posted 819 times.

E. All of the above.

If you chose E you would be correct, and I am not alone. The overwhelming majority of the high schoolers and college students I know have grown up on Instagram. In the process, we’ve been inundated with the bodies, personalities, and emotions of the people we choose to follow. Our presence in the digital landscape, which undeniably and indisputably accounts for a significant portion of our Real Lives, has been irrevocably influenced by those whose lives we’ve chosen to subscribe to. Through the people we follow, we learn unspoken rules about when and what to post, how we should talk to people in the comments, and which parts of ourselves we should share.

On a local level, this might be as simple as two high school girls mocking a classmate in the comments and another girl acknowledging that she should actively abstain from acting like or fraternizing with said classmate.
On a larger scale, though, influencers function as gatekeepers, dictating what our bodies should look like and to which products we should commit ourselves.

More recently (and, I’d argue, more importantly), the invention
and subsequent normalization of the “Finsta,” a second, more private Instagram account, has distorted my generation’s shared sense of identity.
I, for example, have three Instagram accounts. Three. And each serves a different purpose. My primary Rinsta is a public page devoted to work, friends, and “What I Want Everyone to See;” there’s my Finsta, a private page more or less featuring the ups and downs of my daily life; finally, I have a secret Finsta, on which I post the most secret, private details of my personal life. As you progress through the accounts, the follower count decreases: 2341, 81, 18. In essence, I, like many people in high school and college, am deciding what information is communicated to which people through the vessel of varying Instagram accounts. Keeping my private and public selves completely separated, I’m empowered to decide who my closest friends are and who gains access to my emotional breakdowns online; I determine who is restricted to a surface level glance at my happiest moments. These rankings, however seemingly trivial, succinctly and concretely define how much trust I put into nearly every person in my life.

Through Instagram, I have effectively divided and compartmentalized the contents of my life, my self. I would never post about a break-up on my Rinsta, and I would never post a thoughtfully written, formal caption on my Finsta. Those are two very separate realms of my being. This begs the question — should I prioritize the parts of my personality and life that people like to see? Since I feel socially enabled to post more openly about happy things (read: work announcements, friends, and birthdays), and people feel socially enabled to engage with that content publicly, should I prioritize those topics over my more nuanced emotions in physical conversations?

I want to make it clear that despite their contrast in content, each of my accounts is equally curated. In reality, Finstas are crafted just as purposefully and heavily as Rinstas! When we’re posting about a breakup, our failing grades, or college rejections, we get to dictate which feelings we give power to. We are intrinsically enabled to prioritize certain subsets of our daily lives, thus creating a digital representation of who we are. This intuitive curation goes deeper, too: through posting, we observe which of our ideas and opinions receive the most engagement. In effect, we begin to reshape our own beliefs based on how people respond to them.

With that in mind, let’s get back to the poll thing I mentioned at the beginning. I have quite literally determined where to eat for dinner, which piercings to get, and whether to pursue relationships based off of the results of polls on my Finsta story. Is this ridiculous? Admittedly, a bit. But it’s also a testament to my generation’s trust.

We willingly let each others’ opinions influence our decisions based on the fundamental principle that the people know best! If I trust someone enough for them to follow my Finsta, why shouldn’t I trust them to weigh in on my personal decisions? On the other edge of that sword, though, if I shape my identity around how people react to my beliefs, have I surpassed trust and shifted towards conformity?

I’ll let you know as soon as people weigh in on my Instagram poll.

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“It’s said that we are who we hang out with… does this also mean we are who we follow? The same way I choose who my friends are, I chose what accounts I want to follow. I follow a lot of activists and astrologers. These two things have always been part of my identity, but following these accounts on Instagram have made their impact deeper.”

-ANN, 22, NEW YORK

“I’m never 100% sure how I present myself in public, I think that’s something I’ll never truly know, just because I can’t see outside of myself.
In private, I feel more comfortable as there’s less an outside pressure and the moment feels more intimate. Online I only present myself in a positive way, so I think people just seeing me online would think I’m happy all of the time.”

-ARIELLE, 17, NEW YORK

“Instagram is a place where I can dress myself up really successfully I guess. I can make myself seem like whatever I want.”

-JOY,19, CAPE TOWN