Social Networking and Online Identities

Identity can be defined as the cognitive and affective understanding of ourselves. With social networking and involvement in online communities becoming increasingly popular, there seems to be more interest in how people create or re-create their identities online. There are many ways in which people express their personal identity. Often the reflection of identity comes down to certain characteristics like clothes, taste in music, sexual orientation, race, religion, and any other affiliation, activities or interests. However, if you take away the physical person then it becomes more challenging to express these individual traits and portrayal of identity.

Young people are one of the primary users of online networking sites, spending approximately 50 minutes per day on the internet. Two of the most popular activities online were participation on personal homepages, such as Facebook, and on blogs. Both of these activities involve portraying to a public audience an image of their identities. For young people, creating and networking online content is becoming an important part of managing identity, lifestyle and social relations. It is throughout this period of their lives that they start to develop goals, opinions, attitudes and other integral traits. 

A large portion of what makes up an online identity is what content is on display and who can see it. Even though social networking has allowed for users to interact with others across the globe, majority of people are only friends with those that are local to them. Most young people have contacts which they have previous associations with (such as study or work) and there is little interest in befriending strangers. There have been on-going criticisms about the people that can see the content in a person's post. Although majority of the time these people are known to them in some form, the "MySpace" generation has been accused of having no sense of shame or privacy.

There are some factors of constructing an online identity which are similar to reality. On the surface level, personal homepages allow room for information such as religion, hometown, place of residence, work, previous employers, education, and so on. However beyond those things, people are also faced with making decisions that are difficult offline as well as online. For example, whom to trust, what information to reveal, reciprocity, when to express emotion, etc. 

Online networks are used by young people as a way to develop a sense of identity. The idea of the self is often constituted through the interaction with others and largely how others view us. Online, people are continuously developing their sense of self through communication. For example in a study of online dating profiles, they found that the sites were popular because they allowed people to explore possible selves and have that identity validated. Often these people were in a place in their lives where one phase of their life was ending and another was beginning (e.g. after divorce). This period of time created self-reflection and a re-creation of identity.