The Way We Live Now: Social Media

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Growing up in this generation, I have an understanding of what it is like to be raised in a digital world. As social media was introduced in the early 2000s, it became a simple and efficient way of connecting people all across the globe in lightning speed. Social media became a revolutionary outlet for people to express their thoughts and feelings. Sharing our moments and everyday experience with people came to be very easy to learn and quite addicting. Growing communities such Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, made it possible for one to form an identity online. In her essay, “The Way We Live Now: I Tweet, Therefore I Am”, Peggy Orenstein, an author of several best-selling books, discussed the ways in which posting content about ourselves …show more content…

She discovered that young people nowadays tend to place importance on the extrinsic value of things such as popularity and approval from others, rather than intrinsic values like personal growth and the true happiness of self-acceptance. “The self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather internally developed” (Orenstein 348). In a way, what we post online is an image that we create of ourselves. We post to get a reaction from our viewers; it is in human nature to want to be liked and paid attention to. Because it is very easy to express ourselves through photos, videos, and statuses, one might take it to the point of self-promotion-drawing in more and more followers with the goal of reaching internet fame. According to American psychologist Carl Rogers’ concept of congruence, “We want to feel, experience, and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self” (McLeod). Social media makes it easy for us to create this aspired self-image. We can organize and polish our profiles to give off an impression of what our style is. Each post turns into a validation of who we believe we are, and how we want to be presented to the public eye. In Turkle’s words, “Those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self, become a performance” (Orenstein 348). If all the moments we experience are edited and carefully shaped to match a persona, are we truly who we think we are or is it all for

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