In recent years, technology and social media in particular has become a crucial part of all our lives. Our social worlds have expanded dramatically and we now have almost limitless access to, and interactions with, people online. Where's the harm in that, you may wonder. Well, think of it this way: whereas once we developed our identity through those we came into direct contact with and a narrow range of societal influences, today we live in a world saturated with behavioural narratives and ‘portraits’ of who we are supposed to be, whether it's a Diaz-esque ‘cool girl’, a Megan Fox-ish ‘hot girl’ or a Gwynnie-style ‘yummy mummy’.
There is a sense that we need to promote ourselves and our lifestyles to ensure that they comply with what society deems worthy or acceptable. And while wanting to live up to societal expectations is nothing new, what is different is the fact that our lives are more visible. Unlike face-to-face interactions, where listing, for example, our child's latest achievements, or the outfits we've bought them, would seem odd, in our online lives we feel the need to update with ever more detail. The simple ‘yep, nothing new’ you would happily say if you bumped into a friend just won't do. This, combined with the visual superficiality of the online world, means that we look to archetypal indicators of success as a means of conveying how well we're doing.
There's not much we can do about it, either – we are programmed to compare, we are socialized into it. Psychologists call this Social Comparison Theory and it centres on the belief that we are all driven to gain accurate evaluations of ourselves by assessing how we are doing in relation to others. The reason we seek out these comparisons is because they provide an objective benchmark against which we can compare ourselves in different areas, giving us a sense of validity and clarity.
There are two ways we do this:
Downward social comparison is a defensive tendency that people use as a means of self-evaluation. We look to another person or group who are considered to be worse off in order to dissociate them from ourselves. It makes us feel better about who we are, and is probably why watching bad reality TV is such a popular guilty pleasure.
Then there are upward social comparisons, and research has suggested that comparisons with others who are better off can lower self-esteem.
Unfortunately, the latter are exactly the kind of comparisons that we tend to seek out online when we're feeling low. Online, we make upward social comparisons because we are all portraying our ‘ideal’ selves. The best photos, the best dinners, the trips, the stories about our kids’ achievements… it's the superlatives of each other's lives that we are using as benchmarks. And we make upward comparisons both consciously and subconsciously, so often we aren't even aware we’re making them.
To complicate things further, research has also shown that we tend to spend more time online when we’re feeling low or lonely, which means we are also more likely to see the fabulous, well-edited lives of other people at a time when we are feeling the lowest about our own. This has given rise to something that researchers call ‘FOMO’ or ‘Fear of Missing Out’. FOMO is the upshot of seeing friends and family relaxing on holiday while you are at home exhausted from night feeds, trying to hold down a job and keep a household ticking over. It's the fear that everyone else is having more fun, more excitement and more anecdote-worthy experiences than you. And given that our friends’ lives, accomplishments and experiences are plastered across a multitude of devices, it's easy to feel you're missing out.
The truth is, our world has always 'socially constructed' us to some extent. Our families, the cultures we identify with, both national and social, have always played a role in defining who we are. But what we are seeing now is what happens when social comparisons are made not with each other in ‘real time’ or even in ‘real life’ but with edited online versions of each other. In many cases, we aren't aspiring to be like the 'real' people we actually have an affinity with, either through direct knowledge or research, but rather the much revered but fictional characters we see on screen. I think we need to read profile pages the way that we would read a press release or sales pitch – with a healthy degree of scepticism. They are edited version of peoples’ lives and the ‘editors’ are all trying to figure out what their audience wants and give it to them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that social networking is bad and that we should all be walking around with brick-sized mobile phones again, but we do need to realise that our online identities can affect who we think we need to be offline, too. In fact, the two worlds are becoming ever more intertwined. As such, it is so important to learn to disconnect from our ‘false’ identities to gain the freedom of who we really are.
Guest posts
Guest post: Dr. Linda Papadopoulos - 'how does spending time online affect our sense of self?'
MumsnetGuestPosts · 30/10/2014 15:10
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