Why do I care so much about my online persona?
If you were to ask me everyday what my opinions on social media are, everyday I would give a different answer. While my social media habits and usage don’t vary much from day to day, my thoughts and feelings about what comes through my feed changes everyday. Despite being a social media major, I really don’t maintain or post on my own social media. I’m a firm believer that social media should be used as a way to stay in touch, and keep connected with family. I love checking my Facebook feed to see my pictures from my little cousin’s gymnastics competition, updates on my family in California, sharing my own updates and achievements, anything that helps me stay connected to the people I care about.
Despite this, I still find myself falling into the trope of only wanting to share the highlights. I edit my photos to hide acne, only post when I’ve done something cool and exciting. On the rare occasion I actually do post on my own social media, I find myself asking my friends for approval before I hit send. I ask them about everything from the edit on the photos, the order I arrange them in, and what to caption the post. I constantly ask myself, as someone who uses social media solely for the purpose of maintaining connections, why do I care so much?
I’d like to think I’m pretty self-confident. Sure, I might not wear the most expensive clothes, buy high end makeup, or jump to buy whatever new products might be trending, but I’m ok with that. I’ve never felt the need to be “on trend” in order to fit in. I’m very comfortable in my low-maintenance lifestyle, so why do I feel the need to put on an act for social media?
It’s easy to find studies detailing how social media is bad for our mental health. And while I can see that in my own posting, I think if we were to take a step back, and look into why social media was created in the first place, we might have a different outlook. I absolutely agree that comparing ourselves to influencers, only seeing the “perfect” content displayed has a major impact on how we see our own lives. The constant need to one-up those around us feeds into this. We’ve become so blinded by the exactly curated content, that we’ve lost sight of the interconnectedness that the digital world provides.
I use each of my social media platforms for different purposes — for instance I’m on Facebook to stay in touch with my aunts, uncles, cousins and other family that don’t live close by, and I use my Instagram primarily to keep track of friends I don’t see often, as well as to market my photography business and equestrian team. Each of these pages has a different tone throughout the posts, and each page is maintained for a different purpose. I have no problem curating posts for the team page, or my photography page — as neither of these are directly tied to my name. I suppose the anonymity of it makes it easier to put myself out there, but if posting on those pages is no problem for me, again I ask why I avoid posting on my personal page?
Frankly, I don’t have a straight answer to this question. Maybe it’s because posting on my personal page involves actually posting pictures of myself — I became a photographer because I much prefer being behind the camera, not being the subject of attention. But when I’m displaying my art this anxiety disappears. So I suppose it boils down to the vulnerability of it. Social media has evolved far past just sharing with close friends and family, to now having your content on display for all the world to see.
As social media evolves, this concept of interconnectedness is becoming more and more interesting to expand and explore.
