Are You the Same Person on Social Media as You Are in Real Life?

 

There are many concerns and different ideas surrounding social media, one of which is your identity online, who you are online can vary from who you are in real life. The internet has many tools that can be used for good and for bad, photoshop and filters, for example, can simply be used to change the background a little, maybe there was a leaf in your face that you wanted to get rid of, or a tree in the background looked particularly ugly, there are tools online that allow you to fix those things to edit out a simple mistake that you could've fixed by yourself but it was easier to fix online. Now there is a dark side to these tools, maybe instead of getting rid of that ugly tree, you completely change the background, making it look like you are somewhere that you aren't, maybe instead of getting rid of the leaf in your face you change the way your face looks, or change the way your facing.

These tools can be a problem, being able to change things about yourself and things around you can lead to misleading posts and pictures. These posts can lead to people making themselves look better than they are, whether it is physically changing the photo, or changing it in a way to make you look mentally or emotionally better, this can cause people to feel that they are below this person, which can lead to mental instability and depression. It can also be degrading to the person who posted it, people will have unreal expectations of them in real life, making them stressed about whether they're living up to their online profile, which can cause them stress.

But these tools aren't all bad, you can use them to change something that doesn't matter but could make something more appealing overall, you might also edit out something that some people might find to be offensive or disturbing, and you save them from looking at it. It can also be useful in consideration to other people if you have some random person in your photo and you like the picture but that person has explicitly said they don't want to be in the picture or you just want to respect their privacy you can edit the photo to not have them in it.

The urge to do this might be part of the reason it happens so much, maybe you took a picture that you look back on and see how you could make it so much better with a few tweaks. It might be such a small difference that nobody notices, but it means something to you. You also might not care and won't cause any detriment to anyone else, making it completely harmless, and maybe boosting your self-confidence at the same time. Overall you can become a completely different person online, using online tools, but it isn't always a bad thing.

- Erik