Self Identity on Social Media & Broader Issue with American Social Environments

How much of ourselves do we have to put into our content & how does it influence us, our culture & perceptions to have such a “self-centered” approach to what we create?

The following is an essay adapted from an Instagram post on February 26th, 2021. The voice of this piece, in that iteration, was geared toward an audience that is largely aware of the Instagram antics. In other words:

· An emphasis on short, easy to digest posts

· A tendency to be either very surface level or deeply personal

· Focused on individual experiences and interpretations of the world around the creator.

· Knee jerk reactions, both positive and negative, in the comments

· Content created with the algorithm and “engagement” always in the back of your mind and influencing the nature of the content created

As a burgeoning writer, I am moving towards long form writing on a few platforms. I am excited to expand my thinking and research in an essay format, as opposed to teeny tiny Instagram blurbs.

One area of research I like to explore is how design influences behavior and wellbeing; whether that’s design of a physical space such as in city planning, social space such as cultural constructs and guidelines, or in digital spaces such as the very particular landscapes of Instagram and Facebook, among others. When I consider Instagram, I ask how much is the nature of the platform a result of preexisting environmental and cultural forces, and how much is shaped and developed within that space, unique to the platform, but then having ripple effects back to the people and environments in “the real world”?

There are several aspects of exchange between “IG” and “IRL” that I could unpack, but for today I try to focus on the issue of how self-centering Instagram is and relate it to the need for human connection.

Instagram offers, for some, an opportunity to share perspective and insight. That may be too idealistic, depending on your view or experience of Instagram. Yes, it can be a space of highly curated pictures and captions. Yes, it can be a space for pictures of food and laughing people with motivational quotes. But it has expanded into a space with many types of communities and interests. Both before covid but especially now, people have flocked to the space in desire of…what? Likes? Attention? Connection? Smoothie recipes? Education? Community? Fashion? Hot people? Advice? All of the above. We are using Instagram as a micro version of the worlds we either are already a part of, want to be a part of, or wish to create that may not currently exist in real life.

I am quite fascinated by the vessel of Instagram, the space it has created and the way people navigate its corridors, pushed and prodded by the algorithm and other users. I, for one, have historically been very involved in the Instagram communities of fitness and sobriety, both of which were a reflection of the communities I was engaged with in real life, in Austin, Texas. The fitness and sober spaces have a lot in common, I’ll write about that another day. Both of these spaces can have a large emphasis on the importance of The Self, and what decisions you are in charge of or capable of making regarding behavior, lifestyle, health, and more.

American culture in general can be very focused on The Self. Threads of individualism are deeply embedded in everything we say and create, both historically and in the present. When I look at Instagram, I see hyper focused individualism and distorted versions of The Self. This lends to the culture and byproducts of: influencers, echo chambers, vulnerability hangovers, misinformation and self-importance. I believe this is a byproduct of a broader American culture that elevates individualism and has removed many opportunities to create community in real life. Meaning a lack of physical spaces, time and resources to connect with others. This environment perpetuates the focus on oneself and simultaneous social disconnection, in an endless loop.

Let’s unpack Instagram as a space to have dialogue and build community, and see how the focus on “the self” detracts from that potential goal. An Instagram post is typically from the perspective of the creator. You may be thinking, yeah obviously, what other perspective would it be from? Well, while a perspective will always be coming from a particular person (and will always have bias pertaining to their specific experiences or knowledge), the perspective shared does not have to INCLUDE one’s opinion.

From discussion groups to newspapers to TV shows, forms of communication and media have always included opinions and declarations of an individual about a particular situation, feeling, experience, etc. But platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, are shaped in such a way that highlights the self and makes a clear and strong demand for an expression of that self. Social media demands a response from you about everything going on in your personal life and the world around you. As I mentioned, some people are just posting food and selfies, to be sure. I personally saw a big shift from Facebook to Instagram as a means of escapism from volatile political discourse. Still heavily focused on the self. Probably even more so once acquired by Facebook.

But increasingly, in some (big) corners of Instagram, there is a push for vulnerability, authenticity and a reaction to the world. Not unlike the Facebook status, but I’d wager it’s even grittier. A push to go deeper and reveal more of your Self as a means of cultivating connection, empathy and relatability with others. Add on to that the pressure of consistency. It’s a space of self-expression that insists on a constant stream. Expressing ourselves on social media equates with being seen on social media. In order to continue to be seen, a person has to keep engaging and posting over and over again. Jia Tolentino, in her book Trick Mirror (2019) talks about this requirement of engaging in order to be seen on the internet: “In real life, you can walk around living life and be visible to other people. But you can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet — for anyone to see you, you have to act. You have to communicate in order to maintain an internet presence.” This constant action and the imagined necessity to focus on ourselves through self-expression has led to a centering and heightened sense of self-importance with a bloated, distended version of The Self.

Lately I see a lot of push towards creating action through dialogue and discussion on social media. I think that’s great and necessary. However, is it possible to have real dialogue if we keep centering ourselves & have the perception that what we say holds so much importance? American culture posits that each individual voice is very important (Largely only in theory, as our economic and political systems typically don’t follow through on that). The cult of the individual is very strong and can serve as a catalyst for speaking up in the first place. Should we speak up? In my opinion, yes. Do we need to speak up about everything and/or constantly? That’s debatable. If everyone thinks their stance is incredibly important and vital, that diminishes our capacity to appreciate other opinions and views, or change our own when necessary. This is if we even get opposing views on our profiles, as many profiles have curated homogenous followings that reinforce (and don’t question) the views of the creator. Hello, echo chamber. I will relate this to the “real world” problem of a lack of integrated physical spaces. Several researchers and writers have pointed out that we lack community spaces, and specifically ones that aren’t stratified socioeconomically and racially. Despite social media seemingly being a way to connect people from many different backgrounds, and it does, it still heavily separates and siloes different groups and perspectives.

On the flip side, what is the cost of having to bear the weight/responsibility to be the one to share an experience or mentality? We’re probably all familiar with phrases like, “Only you can tell your story”, “The world deserves to hear your story.” But do they need to hear every part of our story? Is it healthy to tell it again and again? As I mentioned I’ve been involved in the fitness and sober communities. I’ve questioned many times how healthy it is to be saying the same message over and over on a platform like Instagram. Instagram is an expression of self, and if you are portraying the same message, the same self, over and over, it can inhibit one’s ability to change or grow. Or it can create a schism between your real-life self and your Instagram persona. While you may think in theory that one can compartmentalize and separate the two, in reality we don’t know that yet. Social media as a concept and a part of our lives is so young, so new. And Instagram is part of our reality. Just because it’s digital versus physical does not mean we aren’t spending very real hours of our very real day on there. This shapes the self, this influences us. I have heard from people that they see Instagram as a business, they use it strictly for business. But if you are the brand, and you are the person running the account, then that is still shaping a part of your Self, your self image and how you carry yourself in the world.

Additionally, when it comes to this weight of sharing, I have concerns for our mental health. I’m very much included in that collective ‘our’. I have felt, at times, a responsibility to post and share about very personal things in order to: stay consistent, potentially help someone, be “authentic” and be seen. But what I have shared is always to a degree shaped by who my audience is, both literally and potentially, and sometimes gets very personal. And I question if this sharing of ourselves, without a real in person human on the receiving end, does not have diminishing effects on our self-worth or self-image. Or if, alternatively, the “positive” reactions from others reinforces these vulnerable parts of ourselves as the “most important” parts, ignoring our need for a variety of different self-expressions. We can’t constantly be vulnerable. It’s not healthy or necessary. This is particularly concerning, from my perspective, when sharing past experiences. These experiences may no longer be a part of the identity we have or want to have. But when it becomes part of the Instagram persona and is reinforced by others, that reinstills the past experience as part of your present identity. I’ll loosely give the examples of trauma and mental illness. These can be experienced in the present, but can also be things from the past that have since been recovered from. Yet by making those things part of a reoccurring identity on social media it says: “This is who you are, this is how you are seen by the world, this is who you will always be”. There’s a huge difference between sharing something vulnerable from the past with friends or a group, vs. sharing it on social media and having it become a fixture of your brand/social identity. But that’s a whole other snowball of a topic. I’ll save my other thoughts on that for another piece.

Now might be a good time to mention why I wanted to write this particular essay. I was inspired by the recent posts of Instagram creators @the_sober_climb and @shotstoshakes. Saratoga (@the_sober_climb) wrote about the celebrity culture of the sober community, and the danger of putting people on pedestals. Rachel (shotstoshakes) wrote a post about how our posts don’t have to be deeply vulnerable in order to be authentic. Ahh, that deeply elusive magic word of Instagram. “Authentic”. The words “authenticity” and “vulnerability” are the buzzwords of the day. And why? Hot take: Because social media will never be a sufficient substitute for in person connections, and in person connections are lacking as well, if they’re happening at all. (I’d love to, and will, write at some point about the loneliness epidemic in the United States).

So anyways, I read both of these brilliant posts and I thought of Jia Tolentino’s book, Trick Mirror. Specifically, this quote:

“How the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.”

Forming your sense of self is incredibly important. It’s constantly happening in a symbiotic experience with others & the outside world. I believe it’s important to use your voice & test waters with how the messages you receive have been processed & solidified in your mind. Ideally then people would respond & create discourse, connection & action. An issue of social media is that the digital space isn’t a truly thorough connection, but we keep pining for it. The messages in here are “Go deeper, be more vulnerable, share your truth, be authentic” so we share more, with limited actual “engagement” with others. The sense of self needs to be reaffirmed, engaged with and strengthened in person. It can also be developed online, but it appears lately that more and more we are doing it predominantly on a virtual platform. Yes, this is deeply exacerbated by covid. But it was already happening in excess before covid.

Jia Tolentino, again:

“In the absence of time to physically and politically engage with our community the way many of us want to, the internet provides a cheap substitute: it gives us brief moments of pleasure and connection, tied up in the opportunity to constantly listen and speak.”

I deeply believe our real-life communities are lacking, pre covid and now. We lack the physical spaces, time and means to connect regularly with a variety of people. Ray Oldenburg discusses in his book “The Great Good Place” the concept of the “third place” (alternatively called “Third Space”) for community, which is things like community centers, cafes where people gather and talk, places for public discourse with people you have strong and loose ties with from a variety of backgrounds. These places are largely missing from the American landscape due to the design of our communities and the cultural constructs around connecting with others. Vivek Murthy speaks in Together about the need for intimate, mid-level & farther acquaintances to fulfill social & psychological needs. Our brains need both close, intimate bonds but also loose bonds with acquaintances and people further out. These connections lend to our sense of belonging to something bigger than us. Social media provides a teeny tiny distorted fulfillment of human needs. Instagram is a dabbling of breadcrumbs when we need a whole fucking bread forest. Food for thought. If we had better communities, I don’t think we’d be using these platforms the way we do. If we were reaffirmed and appreciated more by a community, and if we were focused on the needs of others, I believe there wouldn’t be such a strong level of individualism. But as it stands, we are lacking community connection, and the nature of social media means we are constantly looking at ourselves, focusing on ourselves, rather than truly connecting with others. I understand that sharing our experiences can be helpful for others and I don’t want to take away from the very real help that has been provided via social media. But in taking a broad look at our culture and society, I think we could stand to benefit by less centering of the self on social media and more communication in groups and communities. About vulnerable things and average things! And more asking questions of other people, to get outside of ourselves.