I’m a young person struggling with my identity, and I’m okay with that!
A student’s perspective on defining self-identity in a digital world.
As an emerging media and communications student, I am regularly asked to define myself for a blog, resume, or biography and every time I find myself staring at a blank page for much longer than I should. Should I talk about my creative and casual side? Or keep it strictly professional? It’s hard to define something as complex as a human identity.
The most basic understanding of identity is the collective sum of sex, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, status, religious tendency, age, physical appearance and much more. Some of these things may stand out more than others, but they also change depending on who you’re with and what you’re doing.
For example, some say that a person has infinite separate identities, while others prefer to think of a person as a singular being with limited scope for differentiation. I know that I change my identity depending on the situation, such as dressing conservatively for family events versus bright and colourful for university, and keeping quiet during heated discussions not directly involving myself versus speaking with great confidence at work.
Blurring Between Personal and Professional
As a student, I am constantly asked to consider what goes on behind the scenes of how we react, what we see and experience in life. I often find myself doing just this after a retail shift. I am what is referred to as a boundary spanner, working on the customer service desk trying to do my best for both the company and the customer. This is quite stressful as my personal values and professional responsibilities collide when I am bound by company policies but I also want to rectify the customer’s grievances. Consequently, I am left feeling exhausted after a day’s work. This type of exhaustion is caused by emotional labour, or role stress, which is defined by the National Institute of Occupational Safety as:
“the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker.”
After an emotionally intense day at work, I find that I am unable to leave the frustration behind and instead bring it home and let it consume my personal identity (which I like to think is quite cool, calm and collected). It’s during these moments of self-reflection that I wonder why I am letting something trivial that happened at work disrupt my happiness at home; why can’t I just be my bright and happy self.
I have since realised that it may not be possible to have completely separate identities as one person. Instead, I’m beginning to think that life is about aligning our personal, professional, mind, body, soul and all other parts of who we are. However, we are challenged by technology to believe that they are and can be completely separate.
Technology’s Impact on Identity
There is a plethora of literature and discourse criticising technology and social media for the role it plays in identity crisis. Of all the arguments I have read, there is only one key concept that stands out to me (admittedly, probably because of confirmation bias). It is a term that theorist Douglas Rushkoff has coined ‘Digiphrenia’, which is the experience of trying to exist in more than one incarnation of yourself at the same time. Rushkoff goes on to explain that most human beings cannot function comfortably with numerous social media profiles and identities operating simultaneously and in parallel. This affirms my new belief that we are one person with a mind, body and soul all in need of alignment.
However, other experts explore the affordances of technology and social media’s ability to develop and maintain multiple identities, which “may be one of the most useful marketing powers of the web”. Marketing executive and writer of Full Frontal PR, Richard Laermer has harnessed this power and currently manages five Twitter handles, six blogs and a Facebook group (which gives me anxiety just thinking about it). He has adopted the pluralist ideology of identity and states that “I’m not one-dimensional”.
Sasha H Muradali is another who is currently managing elements of her personal and professional identity separately online with two blogs, seven Twitter handles, four Facebook pages, Tumblr and more. To contradict my newly found understanding of identity (my figurative solid ground), Laermer and Muradali are proof that one person can display many parts of oneself as a separate identity.
After considering both ideologies, I am no closer to defining exactly who I am, but I am definitely feeling more confident that there is no right way to define one’s identity and that’s enough for me.
So maybe next time I’m trying to define myself in a blog, I will write about what makes me who I am: one part creative, one part professional and a whole lot of awesome.
