{"id":88,"date":"2016-10-28T14:49:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T14:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/?p=88"},"modified":"2017-01-22T13:14:07","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T13:14:07","slug":"is-this-really-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/2016\/10\/28\/is-this-really-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I Really Myself Online?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the modern age of internet and technology, there is an ever increasing list of ways\u00a0for users to put themselves on display to the world. The rise of Facebook\u00a0and other social networking sites has created an entirely new culture online. According to Facebook<\/a>, there were 1.7 billion active monthly users of the site during June 2016. It\u2019s not just Facebook either, other popular networking\u00a0sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat all have hundreds of millions of active users. As it seems, there are a lot of ways to put yourself online, and a lot of people doing it.<\/p>\n

Social media is used by millions across the globe (Image by Christiaan008)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When scrolling through your Facebook or Instagram feed, it\u2019s rare to see a negative post. I would hardly feel inclined to write\u00a0a status update if\u00a0I were declined in a job interview. But that\u2019s the reality of social media – it doesn\u2019t reflect the reality of real life. As Carmen Fishwick wrote<\/a> in The Guardian,<\/p>\n

life has its ups and downs\u2026 [but] you\u2019ll be hard-pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what effects does this have on the users of such platforms?<\/p>\n

Example: Essena O’Neill<\/h4>\n
\"O'Neill
O’Neill edited the caption of her photos to reveal the truth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Essena O’Neill<\/a>; a<\/span>n Australian teenager who amassed more than half a million followers on Instagram sensationally quit social media in 2015, reaching international headlines<\/a>. Deleting more than 2000 posts, she edited the captions of the remaining to tell the real truth behind them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was consumed by it\u2026 I wasn\u2019t living in a 3D world<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We have here a perfect example of the pressures surrounding being on social media. She wanted people to believe that she had the \u2018perfect\u2019 life. This meant even going to the extent of having photos professionally taken purely for the purpose of Instagram. Social media led her to create this online persona, purely to gain approval from faceless profiles. This doesn\u2019t only apply to those with thousands of followers however.<\/p>\n

Why is this?<\/h4>\n

An article<\/a> in The Telegraph suggests that one fifth of young people admit that their online profile exhibits little resemblance to real life. So why are we so obsessed with inventing this perfect persona that only exists online? Dr Richard Sherry suggests that it could be down to being competitive and so only uploaded the best and most desirable aspects of our life.<\/p>\n

One fifth of young people admit their online profile bears little resemblance to real life (Image by mkhmarketing)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Obsessing over\u00a0trying to achieve the ideal life online has repercussions in the offline world. We are becoming increasingly\u00a0transfixed with creating an online persona. As a result, we deem it more important than being who we are in the real world, and lose a part of who we are. A culture has been born in social media, where gaining the admiration and adoration of those online has become more important than those around you.<\/p>\n

Ask yourself this: do your social media feeds accurately represent your life,\u00a0or a version you want people to see?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the modern age of internet and technology, there is an ever increasing list of ways\u00a0for users to put themselves on display to the world. The rise of Facebook\u00a0and other social networking sites has created an entirely new culture online. According to Facebook, there were 1.7 billion active monthly users of the site during June […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":92,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[64,16,20,22,19,23,18,26,21,25,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/andrewdavies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}