Identity Creation: Facebook & Myspace

So, sometimes, Facebook rules my life. It gives me the opportunity to view pictures, read profiles, and for lack of a better word, “stalk” my friends. In reality, most of the time I don’t spend hours online surfing Facebook and Myspace, but I do believe that it permits me to engage in anonymous communication. Wood and Smith (p47) said that "computer-mediated communication contexts, like no other person-to-person media before them, offer communicators the ablity to manipulate their personal identities in ways that call into question assumptions aboutwhat is possible and what is appropriate in the presentation of the self." Inside internet communities such as Facebook and Myspace exists a huge potential for anonymity. People who I have never met out there in cyberspace are able to construct their own unique online identity, which could be completely phony for all I know. There are millions of people portraying false identities online. Along with having the freedom to create your own personal profile online comes identity fraud, cyberbullying, and solicitation, as well as a host of other negative connotations.

In a world where you are able to build your own reality, you must consider the audience of your onlookers. While there are many ways to distort your identity on Facebook, revealing too much about yourself is also a bad thing. For example, personal life is something that should not be represented in its entirety on Facebook. You should imagine the information you choose to publish on the site on the front page of the news before you post it, because that’s where it could end up. One time, I was involved in plan which turned out to be illegal, and park rangers from my local state forest questioned me, my friends, and family in an attempt to figure out the situation. But it was Myspace that cracked the case. The rangers checked out all of our Myspaces, and when I went in to their office for questioning, they showed me pictures they had printed off my site of the site of the crime. It was quite a painful realization, and I got burned, so I learned my lesson. Now, I don’t post any pictures of myself looking remotely under the influence of anything, and I consider the fact that my employer could be looking at all of my personal info. The number of connections that social networking sites allow is scary. My mom is on Facebook! Of course, I have blocked my profile from her.

I think that Facebook has become its own cyberculture. Soon, I expect the word Facebook to turn up in our dictionaries! This 8 –letter word is more than just a social networking site, it is a place in our minds that we travel to for significant purposes. But exactly how important is it to you to check your Facebook everyday? In the past, I’ve gotten fed up with Facebook enough to turn off my account. But after school let out and the lazy summer days began again, my self-control came tumbling down to the ground and I re-established my account. For some reason, I think sites like Facebook and Myspace are a result of a degree of unfulfillment in other aspects of one’s life. Most of the time, I cite my reasoning for being on Facebook as “I was bored.” Yes, I could have been spending my time elsewhere doing more productive activities, but instead I opted for going inside my own personal heavily self-influenced world of Facebook.