My Digital Self is just Me

Our professor gave us an assignment to write a blog post about our digital selves. Each
day, we are creating massive and permanent data trails that contain essential expressions of what
happened in our lives. This is something we do both consciously and explicitly, as well as subtly
and indirectly. For several years I’ve been using social media. Through the four social media
accounts – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger that I manage, it holds different perspective
in every account I use. As I write this blog, which only started out as a weekly assignment, it
become a personal reflection as my real persona.

I often use social media, but I am unfamiliar with the concept of a digital identity. Online
person or persona is how the world perceives us on the internet. As we spend more time in digital
devices, we now live in two worlds. As we are living in between these worlds, we inherently, want
to be best possible version of ourselves. Moreover, you could technically create a new personality
for yourself. But as it is easy to reach worldwide fame with a strong digital presence, that same
platform can be used to tear you down in the cruelest way. And it is one of the reasons why I have
been privately or anonymously expressing myself in the social media platform.

The way I represent myself online can be a lot more different than I am offline. I am
creating a separate identity online. I keep an information only for myself that I don’t want to share
with everyone and I’m sure everyone has a lot of secrets to keep and not let others know about it.
As for having friends, I somehow make a distinction between “internet friends” and “real-life
friends”. Some are closer than others, some are not.

As for the latter, our digital selves are just mere embodiment of our real persona. These
social medias impose things that are far from what is meant to be – the reality. As the environment
around me is constantly changing and as I uphold the digital world, it is very important to be
mindful of the things we do. We must keep in mind that there are many people involved when we
are living in the digital environment, so for me, the things that I share with my online friends are
limited and are only basic information. My digital self is just me based on how I interpret myself
in different social media platforms and the identity I created on and off these platforms is the
identity that the life relinquished for me to be perfect.