"We won't feel truly wanted again until the next email, text or call"

 



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“We won’t feel truly wanted again until the next email, text or call” (Marsden, 2010). As Sherry Turkle (1999) explains cyberspace is changing everything, from our identities, sexualities and communities. We can create different personae’s online, therefore we represent ourselves through multiple identities. The internet gives us the opportunity to do so, it makes us think of identity in complex ways, gives us the choice of who we want to be. This relates to my topic of Children’s beauty pageants, they practice their routines of being someone else, and being perfect performers. These children put on make-up, hair, and even fake teeth, they flash a smile, sing a song and change who they are in order to win a prize. This idea of pageants, is really creating a different identity, someone who you can’t be in everyday life, much like social networking sites. When we log on, we think it is just us and the computer, it feels secluded, and when in reality we are linked to millions of other people (Turkle, 1999). As for me, it can be difficult to maintain a good “rep” online, because friends can post things that you didn’t necessarily want shown and now it is on the internet forever. I have a Facebook and Twitter account, and when I was younger, before I knew about the privacy settings I use to post everything and anything, where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, and pictures of me from parties. Now as Anders Alberchstlund (2008) explains in his section of life after social networking, that your chances for employment can decrease if your social media feeds show damaging events from your past. The embarrassing thoughts and pictures can be accessed (Tribble, 2005) and therefore used against you, and this is one of my concerns with social networking. I try to keep my online identity respectful, as now my parents’ generation is becoming familiar with Facebook, and I want to give off a good representation of myself. When it comes to me knowing that I am under constant surveillance, say by the government, I truthfully don’t focus too much of this aspect, rather than of people I know being able to search and “creep” me. It rarely crosses my mind that a higher power has access to my accounts. On Facebook (referring to this the most because I have had it the longest) I am “private”, so only my friends can see what I post. Now I am aware that this probably isn’t the case, but I have tried to takes steps to make my Facebook page less visible to the public. I especially liked when Turkle (2012) said “they don’t change what we do, they change who we are” I think this is specifically related to cellphones. Texting is now very familiar to people, we all want to “hangout” with certain people, while still keeping in contact with others (thinking of this, it is very rude). She explains that we want to spend more time with technology, because we believe that no one is listening to us. I think this is very true, when we are on our phones we feel a sense of belonging, this is also true with all social networking sites, it’s the fact that we are never alone. Social media in my opinion is a huge phenomenon that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and therefore we need to spend more time making younger generations aware and helping change the way communication is learned, by having face to face conversations and learning that it is okay to be alone sometimes (Turkle, 2012).

References

Albrechtslund, A. (2008) Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday. 13,3

Turkle, S. (Nov., 1999). Cyberspace and Identity. American Sociological Association, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 643-648.

Turkle, Sherry. "TED Blog." TED Blog Places We Dont Want to Go Sherry Turkle AtTED2012 Comments. N.p., 1 Mar. 2012. Web. 16 May 2013.