Alvarez

Maria Alvarez

Professor Jeniffer Rodrick

English 115

25 September 2019

Two Identities One Body

The transition from being a teenager to becoming an adult is the most important and

critical part of a person's life because it is when a person forms their identity. In the past teens

formed their identities based on the things that surround them like their family, their school, their

community and even their religion, this is because their main goal was to feel accepted by those

around them. Nowadays teens are not only being influenced by their surroundings but also by the

social media they use; their followers, famous people and influencers, brands, different cultures

and different ideologies that they have access to thanks to technology. This has given teenagers

the freedom to build their own identity and their thinking in many different ways. However this

does not mean that the things they express online and who they are online is accepted by those

surrounding them in real life, therefore technology has affected these teens by making them build

two different identities, their identity online and their identity in real life.

Teens have the need to feel accepted or feel like they are part of a group. For example in

the past if you liked sports you try to fit in with the athletes but if you liked making music then

you were more likely to hang out with the band members; you would dress like them, talk like

them, watch the same things that they did, etc. In modern times is a bit different teens are using

social media to fit in or feel accepted. Danah Boyd claims that adolescents use social media in '

cool building, ' closely creating self-images with words, images, and media to handle the

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impression others have of them. Their goal is to look ' cool ' and create peer validation. In the

article “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage

Social Life” she states ““Throughout the country, young people were logging in, creating

elaborate profiles, publicly articulating their relationships with other participants, and writing

extensive comments back and forth… many considered participation on the key social network

sites... essential to being seen as cool at school.” (Boyd pg.1). This demonstrates that teens now

are using images and posts to find peer validation, mostly in their schools, and to be seen as

“cool” by their friends. For example instead of hanging out with their friends teens now post

similar pictures to the ones their friends post or follow the same people that their friends do. This

just goes to show that in today's world to fit in school teens are using social media.

Teens ​start to build a different identity online when they choose to hide certain things of

their life from certain audiences to be accepted in the online community. Teens hide certain

things because they are embarrassed by them and they feel like they will not be accepted. Hope

Jensen Schau and Mary C. Gilly discuss in their article, “We Are What We Post?

Self-Presentation in Personal Web Space”, how individuals suppress aspects of their life in order

to maintain a desired self image, “Strategies of self presentation often revolve around repressing

personal information or supplanting it with modified or fabricated details more congruent with a

desired self” (Schau and Gilly pg.387). Demonstrating that although some teenagers can not hide

things that embarrass them in real life they find it comforting and easier to hide them online and

be accepted by people around the world, therefore they start to lie about who they really are, they

start to change their identity.

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The first identity a teen builds is caused by the exposure to their family, friends and

community, then later in their life when they get access to social media teens start to lie about

who they really are and they start to build a different identity online, they start to post images,

videos, quotes, songs and other sorts of things that are inappropriate for their age or that typically

their family will disapprove of. Their family disapproval does not stop them from posting these

things because by doing this they found acceptance online. For instance in the TV show

“Euphoria” on episode 03 “Made You Look” Rue the main character talks about Kat

Hernandez’s life, played by ​Barbie Ferreira, Rue says that Kat is extremely popular online

because the fanfictions she writes about famous people, her followers lover her admire her when

in real life she gets called “fat” and she gets bullied. This is a clear example of teens creating a

new identity, when she writes her fanfictions she feels accepted and good about herself but she

never talks about that in real life because she knows she will be judged by her peers and her

parents. Later in this episode we see Kat creating a PornHub account because she seen the a

leaked video of her having sex but what made her want to creat an account were the comments in

that video admiring her body and praising how beutiful she was, this made her feel accepted and

it gave her more cofidence in herself. After creating the account she starts to facetime men online

in exchange for money, when asked by her friends and her parents she lies and hides her actions.

She realized that the things she was doing online will not be accepted by her friend and family

because sex and porn is not something that is accepted or normilized by her culture. Although

this is just a TV show these things occur more often in real life, many teens find it making these

type of content in exchange for money easy and it becomes their way of living but they hide it

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from their family, friends and peers, that is why in many videos these teens either hide or cover

their face to not be recognized.

Parents tend to see their own children innocent people that will never do or say bad things

this causes teens to want to live up to their parents expectations of them and make them feel

proud. Due to this teens start to hide the way they talk and the things they post online. Usually

teens create secret accounts that their parents do not know about but in today's world, a new

language has been created thanks to texting and the use of abbreviations and emojis. Teenagers

use this kind of language for sexting or to cover up something bad they are doing and because

parents and other adults do not understand this hidden messages they see it as something

innocent. In their article ​‘Snapchat’, youth subjectivities and sexuality: disappearing media and

the discourse of youth innocence.” the authors Jennifer Charteris, Sue Gregory and Yvonne

Masters discuss the shift that occurs on teenagers relationships and to how much innocence teens

actually have when they use social media. ​“​Social steganography is a process of hiding

information in plain sight. These messages are apparent to those 'in the know' and meaningless to

those who are not. Social steganography excludes people who are not part of the cycle of teen

gossip – namely parents, teachers and peers who are outside their immediate social sphere.”

(Charteris, Gregory, Masters). We are shown that the only people aware of this type of new

language or codes are teens and their circle of online or real friends, this excludes parents and

other adults from knowing the real meaning behind these messages. “We posit that one may be

that social steganography is a response to… the associated adult surveillance.” (Charteris,

Gregory, Masters). Indicating that the overall goal of teenagers using these codes and hidden

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messages is to hide the bad things that they are doing from their parents, to maintain that image

of innocence.

In conclusion, technology and social media has caused teenagers to build two different

identities with the simple goal of finding validation from those around them and those online.

This is because teens become something or someone that they would like to be but can not be in

real life because it is disapproved by their parents, friends and community around them. Having

two identities is like having two different people living inside one body, this has become true to

some people that show their online persona to be one and their real life identity to be a

completely different one. Teens built two identities in order to fit in online and at the same time

find the approval of their parents, friends and community.

Work Cited Page

Boyd Danah. “Why youth (heart) social network sites: the role of networked publics in

teenage social life.” ​MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity and

Digital Media Volume​. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. 2007, pp 1-26. Accessed 9/25/2019

https://www.danah.org/papers/WhyYouthHeart.pd​f

Charteris Jennifer, Sue Gregory and Yvonne Mastres. “‘Snapchat’, youth subjectivities

and sexuality: disappearing media and the discourse of youth innocence.” EBSCOhost,

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libproxy.csun.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=2c772b1b-eb32-4a

ec-9314-0dec9e002233%40pdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#A

N=127561628&db=aph​ Accessed 9/26/2019

​ ritten by  ​Sam Levinson, directed by Sam Levison, HBO

“Made You Look”, ​Euphoria, w

June 30, 2019. Accessed 9/25/2019

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Schau HJ, Gilly MC. “We are what we post? Self-presentation in personal web space.”

Journal of Consumer Research,​ December 2003, pp 385–404. Accessed 9/26/2019

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.474.6954&rep=rep1&type=pdf