In the digital era, identity is no longer an “unchanging and firm” thing. Instead, it’s something we construct, revise and play in several different online spaces. Social media platforms “from Instagram to TikTok” are stages where we play, and decide what parts of us to put out and which to suppress. And from this process arise vital questions: Who do we become when we are online? And how much control do we even have over that identity?
Digital identity is a product of two primary sources: self-presentation and platform design. On the one hand, users are knowingly cultivating their profiles; choosing images and captions and engagements to present a version of themselves. This is a refrain upon Erving Goffman’s famous formulation of social life as “performance,” where people maintain impressions for the benefit of an audience. Online, this performance is even more deliberate; before anyone sees them, we can edit our digital selves to delete and filter and refine.
Digital identity, on the other hand, is also a result of the design and logic of platforms. Algorithms determine what content makes it to the surface and what must stay hidden. That has a subtle effect on people’s manner of speaking out. For instance, users may refrain from sharing unpopular opinions or tweak their aesthetic style to match popular trends, in the hopes of getting more engagement. Identity as such is not just personal but formed by the reward systems of data.
And identity online is ever more connected to metrics. Likes, followers and views have become the new measure of social capital, affecting all human feelings. This establishes a feedback loop: The you we weave online shapes who we are in person, and vice versa. The digital self is not a separate person, but rather an extension of our real-world identity – one that, just as in “the flesh”, we must constantly negotiate through interactions, visibility and the norms of a given platform.
At the same time, digital realms are places of experiment. Individuals can try on identities that might be prohibited in the nonvirtual world — identity of cultural, gender or expressive kind. There are also online spaces and communities, particularly niche ones, that fill a need to belong, try on new roles or receive support. There, the identity is not burdensome and restricted but flowing and co-creative.
But this freedom has its dangers. Identity work on the Internet can also facilitate self-monitoring, pressure to remain consistent in one’s online persona and fear of public scrutiny. Digital traces are also unforgiving, and it’s harder to escape previous iterations of ourselves.
In the end, digital identity is a balancing act between autonomy and structural affect. We build who we want to become, but platforms determine what that self can look like. That understanding of the tension can help us live our digital life more mindfully — aware of the power we exert over our identity, and that which systems exert upon it.
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References
• Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.
• boyd, d. (2014). It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Yale University Press.
• Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. MIT Press.
