Authentic Identity Expression on Social Media | Acacia Chan | TEDxWallaWallaUniversity
Who am I online I could be anybody in the world a sumo wrestler in Japan or a kindergarten teacher in Minnesota social media allows us to be whoever we want to be online which could create a barrier between us and authenticity however I've used social media to more authentically express myself why does this matter according to a 2015 pew research study sixty-five percent of american adults use social media so even if you don't use it yourself chances are high that several people in your social circle do let me talk about a little bit about my own identity I'm a half Japanese half Chinese woman standing before you here today at five foot even that height was my life goal and I'm still pretty proud of it I'm a biblical languages major with a psychology minor and I studied Koine Greek almost every day of my current life loving every second of it I'm a fan of both modern crime shows and ancient Chinese murder mysteries I'm an introverted extrovert and because I grew up in New England I will always root for the Red Sox and the Patriots I'm a lover of progress but I always like to keep one foot in the past these are all parts of the complicated concept known as my identity they're all parts of me but chances are even those of you who know me didn't know all of those aspects about me until today why is that because I haven't shared them with you current societies I imperative to express our identities combined with the various platforms of social media forced me to combat struggles that I'd never before encountered and to find solutions that I never expected how do i say that i express each aspect of my identity to at least one person in the world how you ask through social media I must confess that I was wary of the social media scene at first I didn't get my first Facebook account until my sophomore year in college my first foray into this new world before that I relied on email updates text message conversations and yes even the annual Christmas cards to gather information on people in my social circle I expressed myself to those in my sphere of influence carrying very little about how the rest of the world perceived me I was happy in my own little bubble when I contemplated joining a social media site my concerns included a lack of privacy and a false sense of genuine friendship to issues that I'd read much about in the news however it wasn't until I joined social media that I was able to pinpoint the four major issues that I have with social media and identity expression first the pressure to express all of ourselves second the balancing act of authenticity third the potential for identity crisis and forth the abundance of potential connections now as my awareness of the power I had to shape my identity online heightened I began posting less and less eventually taking a social media hiatus because I couldn't handle the pressure of deciding what was and wasn't shareable the identity imperative the imperative to express all of ourselves is relatively new in current culture as evidenced by sherry turkle book alone together where she says that none of the conflicts of identity brought about by social media are new to adolescence or to Facebook what is new is living them out publicly sharing every mistake and false step businesses have to use the word authenticity a lot in key are in order to reach a highly skeptical audience having been influenced by marketing since day one we're the same way in our interpersonal relationships a lifetime of being warned not only of stranger danger but also backstabbing best friends can take its toll on a person's trust i'm risk averse and so this especially applies to me I don't like opening myself up to potential ridicule and and potential critique however I have found through social media a way to bridge that gap from risk aversion to expressing who I really am which brings me to my next point the balancing act of authenticity essentially if we reveal too much of ourselves on social media we're seen as vulnerable and naive and attention-seeking however phrases such as we didn't need to know that and too much information regularly come up when somebody reveals their sexuality their addictions or their feelings about a minor issue such as peanut butter however we if we reveal too little by saying well very well then if that's how you're going to react I just won't share anything at all ha that also has connotations revealing too little can lead people to believe that we are fake guarded and unapproachable this is what people mean when they talk about social media as merely a gilded picture of someone's life carefully edited to reveal only the best parts and I must confess that I fall on this side of the spectrum I tend not to share anything at all if you look at my facebook profile page you'll see a lot that people have written about me and not much that I've written about myself in fact I haven't posted to my own Facebook account in months my third issue with social media and identity is that we through expressing ourselves through all of these different platforms we can look at that and say okay but which one is the real me this happened to me when i joined the social media sites pinterest and tumblr on Pinterest I was a daydreamer who loved gorgeous gowns and pictures of sweeping scenery I was motivated by fantasy on that platform but on tumblr I was an amateur sleuth dedicated to deduction and reason reblogging crime show theories looking at these two personalities which one was the real me did I have to choose one in order to be completely honest my fourth and final issue with social media is that it allows me to make an abundance of potential connections how do I narrow them down do I have am I missing out on real connection somewhere by it trying to be friends with everyone a friend of mine was musing the other day and he said there is no such thing as kindred spirits anymore I immediately knew what he was referencing in the children's classic and of green gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery the title character and has a best friend Diana who she calls her kindred spirit though the two are eventually parted by education they share every moment of their lives together and every secret between them remain so up until that point we have no such guarantee in the modern world I'm only 21 and I've moved six different times this is common in a mobile society dictated by a shifting job market kindred spirits held together by time and place for lengthy amounts of time are becoming things of the past thus risk averse me is more likely to want to reveal little parts of myself to several different people as opposed to putting all of my identity eggs in one basket social media allows me to do this through globalization I can make connections anywhere in the world but that also leaves me with a lot of options I've never liked having lots of options options are scary to me and global connections are no exception at this point you might be wondering if she's so scared of social media why does she stay shouldn't she just leave wouldn't it be healthier well I've come up with solutions to each of my four issues that I believe may be helpful to people in the same situations remember how I talked about there's this imperative for us to express all of ourselves in order to be seen as authentic people are seen as brave when they confess that they are different flawed and frail and this bothers me not because I feel that these non-conforming aspects should stay in darkness but because it makes me feel as if I must reveal all of me in order to be seen as authentic in order to achieve true honesty well my solution to this is to compartmentalize my identity recognizing that not everyone wants or needs to know everything about me at any given point in time it's all about context for example I wouldn't walk up to someone and say hi I'm an Asian American female who likes ancient Chinese murder mysteries while that may be appropriate in some online context where that set of information is expected in real life it's unexpected and therefore should probably stay inside context matters another thing I did to help compartmentalize my identity for me was to write down all the aspects i could onto a note card this helps me to balance my different identities in order the different aspects of my identity in order to keep them from falling by the wayside people did this in the past by joining clubs societies and congregations and in order to express the compartmentalized identity but now social media gives us the luxury of doing this on a larger scale without ever leaving our seats how do I solve the second issue of authenticity and social media the balancing act not revealing too much or too little I recognized that social media platforms have provide different information and that I've used this to maximize honesty and minimize vulnerability there are two types of social media platforms ones that provide a lot of background information and ones that provide a little to no background information an example of one that uses a lot of background information that I use frequently is facebook you can easily find me on facebook my name is there with my university affiliation and my birthday however you'll find that I don't share much there I might talk about special occasion like Christmas send my sister a birthday message or even an ounce which graduate program will be entering in the fall but I don't share anything about how I'm feeling on a day to day basis because I recognize that it could come back to bite me later the balancing act still exists in my mind because all my background information is there I worry that somebody could take something I said out of context and perhaps tell it to a friend or a parent and then before I know it my reputation that I've worked so hard to protect is shattered so why do I stay on Facebook because it validates and cherishes Who I am on the outside I've worked hard to maintain my reputation my personal brand and facebook allows me to share that with my friends and family and bask in the glow however you probably won't find my tumblr account unless I give you that information don't take that as a challenge I keep it private for good reason the way I use tumblr which caters to the mutual interests of its 550 million users is the antithesis of the way i use facebook whereas on facebook i'll post a lot of background information and very little about how i'm feeling day-to-day on tumblr you won't find any mention of where i go to school what my major is or even my real name what you will find is whether or not i failed a test if i have a major crush on someone special or if I'm just having a bad day sometimes sharing that with someone even someone i know in real life is challenging because i'm not sure that they want to listen the anonymity of tumblr gives me the opportunity to reveal that information to a community that is sympathetic several of my tumblr friends post about fights with their parents and because most of us use pseudonyms we don't know who they are where they're from or even who their parents are but time and again I've seen the community come together and offer sympathy and support the background information is an important the sympathy and support Foster's real connections so I use platforms with little to no background information in order to express why I'm on the inside vs who I'm expected to be on the outside how did I solve the identity crisis you might ask well oddly enough remember that note card I talked about when solving my when compartmentalizing my identity oddly enough that helped me to solve my identity crisis I looked down at that note card with all the different aspects of myself and realized this is what makes me me through being all of these things I am completely and totally myself a diamond when viewed from different angles though it looks different is still a diamond our identity is similar nobody will see it in the exact same way but we can still honestly be us at the end of the day even though we tailor our revelations of identity to the specific audiences around us how did I solve my fourth and final issue the making real connections in a global society well I let my interests guide my social interactions for making separate accounts to express some of my more obscure tastes for example I can talk about cross stitching for ages with a friend in Florida or about ancient Chinese murder mysteries with a friend somewhere on the East Coast making mutual interests the starting point for relationships streamlines the process and allows us to focus on our similarities as opposed to our differences however as with most courses of action there are a few catches how I interact on social media definitely affects the way that I interact away from the keyboard first I look at these three impacts as the price I pay for interacting with social media in the way that i do first the social media makes it easy for us to sever connections in the face of disagreement or abuse in the context of anonymous messaging I think that this is important necessary and healthy for social media platforms to offer however it's not quite as easy as blocking someone in real life before I use social media I was extremely reluctant to ever walk away from a conversation but now i find the urge I find myself suppressing the urge to walk away in the face of a dissenting or offensive opinion second the ease with which certain aspects of my personality are accepted online actually make me more reluctant to share them in real life like i said earlier i'm risk averse and because of that I'm more aware of the raised stakes in face-to-face conversations I'm less likely to be vulnerable there because I have an outlet to express it in a safe way I become the queen of disclaimers in conversation while introducing new parts of my identity saying things like well I may or may not be fond of leaving room for someone to say me too while also leaving room for me to back off and say well I mean not really finally though the Equality of the internet is great in many ways because it guarantees everyone a voice and allows for activism it doesn't always motivate us to be moderate if you go to a social media site you'll often see that the loudest voices are the ones that are the most extreme sometimes this is my choice and sometimes this is by algorithm social media popularity is based around reactions and people like me don't want to attract those reactions and so we'll purposefully phrase our statements in a way that doesn't attract reactions thus not being heard if we decide to speak at all as you've seen through these caveats which are the most prevalent in my personal journey social media still has some issues to solve when it comes to authentic identity expression however I believe that these should be seen as part of the process of progress we don't need to hold tech new technology to a standard of perfection the first or even the hundredth time though I've had my own struggles with social media and identity expression and authenticity I believe that I've reached a point where I am truly happy with the way I interact with and express myself on social media I have found happiness friends and freedom I have maximized honesty and minimized vulnerability while accepting myself as a fully authentic multifaceted human being ultimately for me social media is a way to express myself not a popularity contest now my solutions have worked for me and I hope that some of them may work for you as well I've told you who I am both online and off now the question is yours who are you