Is the Facebook ‘you’ the real you?

Can you truthfully say that your Facebook profile is a true reflection of you as a person and the life you lead?

For many people, their Facebook profile is their digital face to the world.

It is a place where you have complete control and you are free to expose the aspects of your life that you choose to. What is also true, however, is that it is easy to hide behind a Facebook profile and let the world think that your life is perfect, despite what the reality may be. Our online profiles, particularly on sites like Facebook, are carefully ‘curated’ accounts; they are not necessarily true to life. Facebook is a place where the best version of yourself is displayed — although this is true to a varying extent for each user.

The question is, if you are only sharing the parts of your life that you deem worthy of exposing, or if you are enhancing your profile for the eyes of your online audience of ‘friends’, what is the overall value of this to your life?

Paradoxically, sites like Facebook are promoted as places which will help you to connect with people, to develop friendships and to keep in touch. Yet, from the very outset if the picture of your life is artificial (to whatever degree), surely the relationships you build are also fake and lacking any real connection.

Friendship is about more than knowing what someone is doing, who else they are interacting with and what they are interested in – that’s just information. Friendship is about true connection and acceptance. It is revealing who you really are and sharing it with someone else. It is about experiencing life together – the good and the bad. Friendship is grounded in support and care, finding an anchor and security in someone outside yourself. It is personal not public.

I agree that you can use social networking to enhance friendships, but this has to be backed up with actual personal connections, one to one, private conversations that are not displayed for the world to see.

Can you really say that each and every one of your Facebook friends are people that you would choose to socialise with in the real world? Are they all people who you consider to be part of your life?

So I ask you, what is the true value of a Facebook profile? Why do we feel compelled to have a huge following of Facebook friends? Why do we enhance the picture of our lives to appease this audience? The amount of time you spend online editing and enhancing your profile will never add as much value to your life as interacting on a personal level and growing real relationships with people you actually care about. Where do your priorities lie?

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