DIGITAL SELF

• The term "online identity" implies that there is a distinction between how people present themselves online and how they do offline.
• We are living in a digital age and other than face to face interaction, we have interactions involving technology cellular phones, computers and other gadgets. Thus, we build our DIGITAL SELF.
• ONLINE IDENTITY is the sum of your characteristics and interactions. Because you interact differently with each website you visit, each of those websites will have a different picture of "who you are and what you do."
• Sometimes the different representations of you are referred to as partial identities, because none of them has the full and true picture of who you are.
• "Your online identity is not the same as your real-world identity because the characteristics you represent online differ from the characteristics you represent in the physical world. Every website you interact with has its own idea of your identity because each one you visit sees you and your characteristics differently"
• "Online, most research on identity focused on self-presentation". Social media like social network sites. blogs, and online personals require users to self consciously create virtual depictions of themselves. One way of understanding such self-representation is the information and materials people choose to show others on a Facebook profile or Twitter stream.
• SELECTIVE SELF-PRESENTATION AND IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT

  These are characteristics showing behaviors designed to convey an image about ourselves to other people and to influence the perception of other people of this image. This explains why our behaviors can change if we notice that we are being watched or observed.
• Self-presentation can also change depending on who we are interacting with or what personal information we need to provide to present ourselves in a way that will be acceptable to others.
• IMPACT OF ONLINE INTERACTIONS ON THE SELF

  When interacting with other people, we automatically make inferences about them without even being consciously aware of it. We cannot help but ponder what they are thinking about, what their facial expressions mean, what their intentions are, and so on.
• The conclusion is clear, online interaction does not require cognitive or emotional involvement, making our interaction with it much easier.
• This is because browsing social media sties alone can lead to feelings of jealousy when we compare self to the online personal of others.
• Compared with face-to-face presentations, online interactions enable us to self-censor to a greater extent and manage our online identities more strategically which provides greater opportunity to misrepresent ourselves.
• POSITIVE IMPACTS:

  1. Social media sites Inform and empower individuals Increased self-esteem.
  2. Boost one's moral and feelings of self worth.
• EXTENDED SELF IN A DIGITAL WORLD- Russel W. Belk

  Belk presents five changes emerging from our current digital age:

  1. Dematerialization
  2. Reembodiment
  3. Sharing
  4. Co-construction of Self
  5. Distributed Memory
• Dematerialization - Things are disappearing right before our eyes our information, communications, photos, videos, music, calculations, messages, "written" words are now largely invisible and immaterial, composed of electronic streams stored in digital storage devices in locations we will never know.
• Reembodiment - This is characterized as the "breakout of the visual" online, leading to new constructions" and definitions of the self in the virtual world where online games, blogs, web pages, photo and video-sharing sites, internet dating sites are possible; we are disembodied and reembodied as avatars, sharing identity with the chosen avatar virtually.
• Sharing - Uploading, downloading, sharing, etc provide free access of information through web surfing.
• Co-construction of Self - Our digital involvement is social in nature. Our blogs invite comments, social interaction which help in constructing our individual and joint extended sense of self as the new version of Cooley's "Looking Glass Self Theory" known as the collaborative self.
• Distributed Memory - In a digital world, there is a new set of devices and technologies for recording and archiving our memories. The dilemma is seen in the narrative of the self.
• Adolescents' online interactions are both a literal and a metaphoric screen for representing major adolescent developmental issues, such as sexuality and identity.
• Research states that there are more gender-related similarities in establishing an online self and blog use (Huffaker, 2004) and that the online self is a good venue for gender expression and sexuality. This is because in one's online identity, there is no physical embodiment of gender or other physical markers of identity (Subrahmanyam et al., 2004) and the online interactions serve as an agency for negotiating and expressing sexuality (Boonmongkon, et al. 2013).
• Age and sex are the primary categories to which people are assigned (Brewer & Lui, 1989) but in online identity, these are not evident and non explicit. Interactions online are important sources of sexual information for teens (Borzekowski & Ricket, 2001; Ward, 2004).