#RATEMYIDENTITY
My alarm went off at 9 AM, and immediately felt hunger. You would think I would sprint to my kitchen to make myself a quick breakfast. But my phone just pinged and what’s a 22 year old social media obsessed millennial like me to do? Of course, check my phone notifications (than satisfy my hunger) to see how many people have liked my recently posted selfie on Instagram.
“Did Emma like my photo? Did Jessica just unfollow me? I only have 100 likes on this photo. Why? I lost 4 followers…this sucks. What am I doing wrong?”
These are the questions that run through my mind when something I don’t like happens on my social media accounts. It has affected how I perceive my own self worth. I believe that’s the case with being exposed to multiple social media accounts where the amount of likes you get is a reflection of how well-liked or well-known you are to society; you become obsessed with it, you become attached to another world that disconnects you from what’s truly important. For someone who has been on a series of social media platforms for the longest time (trust me, I’ve mastered MySpace, Multiply and Friendster at the age of 10), i’ve unconsciously devoted my time and effort to building a certain image online.
Little did I know, this mindset of having to impress other people through my posts is an actual disorder called “NPD” or “narcissistic personality disorder”. Not to be that person, but let me shift your attention to the basic definition of NPD: it relates to the vain and attention seeking personality traits one exhibits on social media through constant bragging about how “lavish” their life is; when in reality it’s all for the likes (i’m *lowkey* guilty as charged). Okay, don’t get me wrong. I’m not extremely attached to the amount of people who follow or like me (i’m pretty sure I lost over 500 followers in the course of four months, but never once did it affect me emotionally). I think it’s cause I’ve lost a sense of my Instagram feed and I knew that either way, I will not even be able to keep up with my “Instagram theme” because of my so-called-busy-life.
Speaking of which, I believe the concept of having a “nice Instagram feed” or having a nice, consistent feed is ever-growing and I can almost agree that this is not just to entice followers from viewing your account, but I think it also contributes to an individual’s perception of themselves. Being able to entice your followers and essentially maintain or increase the amount of followers you have is equal to your importance (at least that’s what society makes it seem like it). The photo attached below is one of my favourite Youtubers, Sierra Furtado, who I personally follow because of her aesthetically-pleasing Instagram feed.
I specifically remember Instagram model, Essena O’neill who exposed her *very* daunting experience with Instagram. She had over 5 million followers just by posting photos of herself. BUT HERE’S THE CATCH: on her 15 minute video before completely quitting the online world, she stated how negatively invested she became in improving her appearance to create a certain identity that people can admire. By creating this sense of identity, she was able to continuously grow her already increasing amount of followers. But since she was not necessarily being herself and felt detached from her “real identity”, it ultimately affected her understanding of her self-worth. Essena deleted all her social media accounts as she did not feel right about having an online presence at all, but ended up reactivating her Instagram account wherein she edited ALL the captions of her photos (including sponsored ones), to expose the true horror of heavily depending on social media. I personally have never even heard of Essena until her story went viral on social media (co-incidence? I think not).
I think that social media metrics such as likes, follows and views are negatively affecting individuals’ self worth because we associate the numbers that come with it to our importance within the society (the more, the better am I right?). Black Mirror, Season 3 Episode 1 called “Nosedive” specifically highlights the dangers of this issue. Long story short, it revolves around a girl who tries to retain her hierarchical status within society by “faking her way” to getting a 5.0 rating, but this all ended tragically and eventually led to her own downfall.
Shifting my focus on the real world, I believe that social media metrics has caused a drastic change on how we comprehend the concept of “value”, as we have forgotten to value the idea of “posting what we like” since we are so invested in “posting what we think our followers would like”. Value is now based on the number of likes and followers people have, as this allegedly reflects how important you are.
In an interview regarding the parallelism between social media and vanity, a social media influencer states: “If you have a boring profile, you will get no likes. But if you post something revealing about yourself, or something provocative, then you get more likes. People with 5,000 followers are constantly thinking about what they’re going to post next to get a reaction”. Value is related to posting “aesthetically-pleasing” photos that can contribute to people’s perception of us.
It’s completely sad how much we try to live lavish by spending money on things we don’t need to be able to impress the people who probably don’t even care. It’s saddening how relationships have turned into whether or not one follows another on social media. We’ve become so accustomed to increasing our social media metrics through promoting a heavily scripted image of ourselves, that we’ve forgotten to know who we really are. Social media has changed the game, that’s something we can’t deny. As a fan of Justin Bieber, it has given me the opportunity to see Justin Bieber behind-the-scenes, and yes this may seem like he’s giving me a look into his private life….but who’s to say that he’s not just like one of us who modifies his online identity? After all, he’s a celebrity and he’s pretty much an expert at faking everything.
Now that I think about it…I think I have changed my online identity multiple times trying to explore who I really am. No shame at all, but i’ve gone through a hipster phase, a blogger phase and a One Direction fangirl phase but ultimately realized that at the end of the day, it’s what I enjoy doing that really matters. I personally believe we can only cause ourselves dangers when we try to stray away from our own identity. It is healthy to explore and try to find ways on how we can increase our social media presence, however, when we try to compete with other people or when we completely create a distinct and different identity from who we really are…that is when individual consequences come in.
Personally, my love for music has opened various opportunities when I decided to defy from my “fake personality phases”.
Through these opportunities, I gained a valuable amount of followers, likes and views on my social media accounts that did not negatively affect my self-worth nor my perception of value because I know that the amount of social media metrics I gained was based off what I truly enjoy and love.
