I use social media every day and the internet it is becoming more central in our lives every day. Everyone has different online identities that link to their likes and interests. My online identity was established in 2012 and personally, my online identity has defiantly altered since. I actively post and my posts now have different contexts on each form of social media due to what I want to post and who follows me. My online identity began on was Instagram, solely due to the fact that it was a new phenomenon and all my friends had it. However, since 2012 my thoughts, purposes and intentions have changed surrounding why and what I post. Whereas on Facebook I believe that my main purpose is to message my friends and stay in contact rather than posting updates. My most authentic form of social media is Snapchat due to not caring as much of others thoughts of me due to having the power of adding who I like and only accepting those who I know personally. I never had Twitter before studying Social media and so far I haven’t posted as much as my other sites therefore having little identity portrayed.
Instagram would be my most active form of social media. Back in 2012 I would have just followed my friends and would have posted at random with photos that I wanted my 12 followers to see with the Instagram name of @ella_bub that I made up. However, over the years my online identity altered due to many factors such as going into high school, making more friends etc. Thus, this changed my online identity as I started to care and my username and look quickly changed to Ella.smitth. Although throughout my change of identity I have always loved to post Instagram photos where I have random filters and use whitty captions to share to my following of now just not my close friends but acquaintances and so on. Whereas on my second Instagram account, I only post very random stuff to my close friends and don’t think about what I am going to post and when I am going to post it or how I look. It is an authentic representation of me. Overall my Instagram identity is subjective depending on the account or the mood I am in that day.
On Facebook, my identity is quite different to my Instagram but also similar in some ways. I don’t actively post on Facebook unless I am updating my profile picture which isn’t often. However, when I do upload my profile picture it takes a while to choose that as the one, the one that I share to my friends of what I want them to see me as. In some way, I think my profile picture classifies my online identity and others identity as it’s what you see them as online when you are talking to them and is the main focus. My Facebook is totally private and I have never accepted a friend request from someone I have never met or heard. I feel as though although private it does have a lot of information about me on there if someone went stalking. So therefore, my actual identity is more evident on Facebook then a fake one that some people might fake.
My online identity on snapchat is my rawest form of social media. Even my bitmoji is ugly. On snapchat I don’t share my location on Snapmaps due to not wanting everyone to be able to see where I am therefore I keep it private. However otherwise on snapchat I share all. I couldn’t care less about what I look like on snapchat and neither do any of my friends therefore I believe that they also help me create that online persona as it makes me feel comfortable to be myself.
Twitter is the form of social media I post on the least and have developed little of my identity on there. My Twitter is for university purposes and therefore my online identity is guarded due to being a formal account as my tutors follow, however I also post how I feel about assignments therefore twitter is more of a raw side of my online identity.
As Angela Thomas asserts in her book ‘youth online: identity and literacy in the digital age’ that “online identity is about the authoring of self as a living-out of these states of being, becoming, belonging and behaving through a range of everyday social and discursive practices that are connected with the body. Yet it is also about a close editing of self…” This quote reflects my online identity as sometimes my online identity is subjective due to wanting to fit in but also to be myself.
Thomas, A., 2007. youth online: identity and literacy in the digital age. 1st ed. New York: Peter Lang publishing inc..
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