The Effects of Social Networks on Identity Construction of the Youth

Over the last few years, the emergence of the internet and social media in particular have been a big part of almost everyone’s lives, specially adolescents, providing them with both benefits as well as risks. Social networking sites have enabled users to connect with anyone within miles apart, learn new skills, gain more social knowledge, build more brand awareness for businesses, and many more techniques.

Due to that, it has become much easier for everyone globally to build relationships and educate themselves about any area of interest in a matter of minutes. While it cannot be denied that the rise of social networking sites has eased down life from many aspects, the risks it brings outweigh the benefits to a large extent, specially for the youth and the upcoming generations.

This conference will be arguing the effects of social networks on identity construction of the youth by exposing the extent to which its effects are considered dangerous, and debunking myths that conclude it carries more benefits.

The Effect on the Development of the Youth’s Identity

The rapid emergence of social networking sites has become a major part of adolescents’ daily lives that it is almost considered a part of their growing phase. By sharing hundreds of images, sending millions of texts, and spending almost all their day networking, it cannot be denied that it may leave an effect on the development of their identity as they grow older.

Back in the days, children were mostly viewed as a symbol of innocence and purity, as adults were the ones who mostly took photos with expensive cameras. Whilst now, and with the development of instant photos, children have been given an ‘unprecedented degree of self-determination’ due to the invention of the internet (Renner, 2019).

This portrays how social networking sites have intimated children to feel the constant need to click and share images, which can lead to corrupted identity from unsupervised screen memories rather than physical and realistic childhood memories.

In other words, the term ‘childhood’ will be debunked as a growing phase of ‘screen memories’ that can never be erased away from their lives, rather than a growing phase of physical innocent memories that can easily be let go of. This may especially be harder for those who try to create a cleaner, more adultery future career and position in their lives.

The Effect of Interacting with “Fake” and Scammed Personalities on the Internet

Similarly, the permanent presence of past shared contents of teenagers, may make it harder for them to accept the idea that their teenage phase is considered a normal phase to make mistakes and learn from them. This is because social media constantly reminds them of previous appearances and previous choices, conflicting the idea that their past identities was a temporary phase and not a permanent one.

On the other hand, although social networking sites allow the youth to express and explore their identities, using the internet as the way to do so may be risky at a high extent.

This is because social networking sites allow users to create fake identities, use fake names and even portray fake contents that can affect the identity construction of the youth, by building emotions of constant doubt and low self-confidence as they start comparing themselves to those who may be sharing fake content.

As a matter of fact, (Gunduz, 2017) has stated that virtual communities are not considered real enough as they do not precisely allow for physical interaction and communication (Gunduz, 2017). Relating back to identity construction of the youth, this indicates that children who have grown up with social networking sites would be more exposed to virtual or in this case ‘fake’ communities.

This can lead to a lack of experience in physical communication in the real-world, career wise as well as for generic life chores, which may affect their overall confidence and sense of professionalism.

Social Networking Sites and its Role on Parenting

As beneficial as social networking sites may be to the society, they are twice as harmful to the upbringing of the youth. With the rise of social networking sites and how much it is considered a necessity in one’s daily life, it is becoming especially harder for parents to raise their children in a healthy and protected environment.

Social networking sites can disrupt parents from raising their children in the right manner, culture and religion wise, because of how social networking sites are spreading inappropriate and mostly unsupervised content about different perspectives of life that may play with the minds of the children who are being taught otherwise by their parents.

While it may seem like for children to grow up, is it essential to have knowledge of and understand different cultures and ways of living, the way social media portrays that is completely inappropriate and vulgar for their mind capacities to interpret correctly. Eventually, it can lead to them wondering and questioning their parents about specific norms that they are trying to teach them, when other kids they see on the internet are being taught differently or are allowed to behave differently.

Although it cannot be argued that it is the parents’responsibility to sensibly teach their children why a specific action should or should not be taken, the constant spread of irrelevant content on social media outweigh that and may disrupt the children’s thoughts to a dangerous extent.

While it also cannot be argued that parents now have the ability to restrict certain content to their children and supervise their usage and time spent on social networking sites, yet it still isn’t easy to monitor their every action.

This is due to how the current generation is highly knowledgeable with new technology, how to access it, how to delete certain content from their viewed history so that parents are not able to monitor it, as well as use certain software’s that their parents may not know of or wouldn’t have much knowledge about accessing as much as the younger generations would.

The Transition from Childhood to Adulthood

Moving on, the action of constantly feeling the need to post specific content that would ‘fit’ into the social media communities' way of sharing or ‘approving’ of others is only making it hard on the self-esteem of adolescents, especially as they transition into adults. In other words, is it now almost seeming like an indirectly stated obligation to have a certain appearance or perspective to belong with the ‘cool’ side of social media users.

(Thomas, Briggs, Hart, & Kerrigan, 2017) explain that younger social media users may use self-presentation to ‘claim membership’ of the online communities, where they feel the need to establish rules like editing elements of their digital persona to share specific and sometimes ‘unrealistic content’ of themselves to attract online audiences.

This represents how the daily actions being taken on social networking sites may create great pressure in adolescents’ lives, developing in them feelings of competitiveness, overthinking, and constant self-comparison to other social media users who may be perceived as more significant than them due to the content they share.

Returning back to how this may affect children’s identity construction, it can with a high extent build in them the idea that they are always ‘less’ significant if they do not retain a specific social media image, resulting in a low-self esteemed and unconfident identity in their future lives.

The Effect of Social Networking Sites on Professionalism and Future Careers

Relatedly, most children and teenagers are unaware or in fact choose to neglect that every action they make on social media always stays there and can never be permanently removed away forever. It is also quite frightening as now it is not just about content that cannot be deleted, but it is also that every action taken by any user is being watched and may once be held back against them as a threat to their future careers and relationships.

In fact, a 2013 study has discovered that 77 percent of companies use social networking sites to hire candidates, which increased from 56 percent in 2011 (Segal, 2021). Not only does this imply that actions taken on social networking sites are to be strictly taken care of, but it can also mean that recruiters have the ability to investigate a specific candidate’s online personal image as a checkup before approving of their employment in their company.

To adolescents transitioning from young, carefree children to professional adults, it may sometimes be a threat to them if the contents they have shared when they were younger is considered “offensive”, “inappropriate”, or simply “unfitting to their work environment”.

As a result, this can lead freshly transitioned children to doubt their professionality and position in the society, when past actions are accepted to be reckless and carefree to a certain extent due to incomplete maturity and younger age that everyone was expected to go through at that time.

Social Media, Violence, Aggression, and their Effect on Child Identity

According to (Livazovic, 2018), social media provides a wide range of negative effects on children that relate to violent content, mislead advertisements, inappropriate contact with others, health issues, and many more potentially harmful risks. For example, children watching violent content on social media can build characteristics and feelings of constant anger and aggression, eventually leading to them gaining pleasure in watching such violent acts.

This can leave a huge negative impact on them growing up, where they tend to grow anger issues and impatience thus have poor relationships with their family and friends, if any.

Additionally, (Livazovic, 2018) explains that Meta-analyses show that there are in fact four main effects to watching violent content; the aggressor affect (leading to feelings of aggression), the victim effect (leading to viewing the world as a frightening place), the bystander effect (becoming less sympathetic to victims of violence), and the appetite effect (taking violent content more as an entertainment).

The extent to which violent content has left such a huge negative impact on children, is explained by describing them as four effects in order to portray the danger and seriousness of how it may disrupt identity construction on children from a critically young age.

Multiple and Fragmented Identities Virtually and Offline

Likewise, social networking sites can affect teenagers in a way where it can cause them to unintentionally create multiple identities for themselves. The extent to which technologies have taken over our ‘selves’ as a “social saturation”, where the self becomes fragmented, results in a “no self at all” (Lynn, 2009).

In the case of teenagers’ identity, (Lynn, 2009) portrays that multiple identities from a ‘fragmented self’ makes it easier for teenagers to create an online identity that might be a lot different from their real ‘offline’ identity (Lynn, 2009).

In other words, this explains how social networking sites leads teens to enter into circles of confusions about who they really are, thus creating multiple identities easier as there are no limitations to how they represent themselves behind screens, but harder in the real world as they themselves are unsure, leading to a corrupted identity formation.

Accordingly, the idea that the usage of social networking sites for children and teens helps them express and explore their identities is evidently debunked as a somewhat unsuccessful technique, because the negative impacts it holds outweigh the positive ones.

Corrupted Family Relationships and its Effect on Adolescents’ Identity Construction

Another factor that largely leads to an unclear identity in the youth is the corrupted and unhealthy family relationships. A 2018 study has found that children spend around three hours on technological devices, while 83 percent of parents stated that the use of social media is challenging at their home (Quinlan, 2018).

This interprets how social networking sites are negatively affecting family relationships, where it is slowly isolating family members who live in the same house apart from each other. For children and teenagers specifically, slow damages of family bonds may negatively impact their identities and their growing up phase to an emotionally destructive extent.

This can also result in unawareness of family values and family importance in adolescents, which can eventually lead to regret and can build trust issues in them as they grow up. In more depth, children who lack close relationships with their family may most likely grow up with feelings of isolation and prefer to avoid communications with people.

Also, the extensive use of social networking sites by children and teenagers may disrupt their upbringing and learning stages, causing negative health impacts like obesity, phobias, and more. Due to that, they would not have been fully developed emotionally and physically to experience the real world by the time they transition to adults.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this conference has strongly argued with facts and proof the effects social networking sites has on identity construction of the youth, as it has exposed the extent to which its effects are considered dangerous, and debunked myths that conclude it carries more benefits.

As a result, it has been found that corrupted and unclear identities of the youth that were a result of extensive usage of social networking sites can lead to lack of experience in physical communication in the real-world, low self-confidence, constant feeling of competitiveness, and isolation.

Therefore, this conference paper argues that the excessive usage of social networks negatively impacts the identity construction and the growing phase between adolescents, and must be limited to certain extents.

Bibliography

Gunduz, U. (2017). The effect of social media on identity construction. Miditerranean Journal of Social Sciences, 8(5). DOI: https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1515%2Fmjss-2017-0026

Livazovic, G. (2018). Role of social media in adolescent social relationships and personal development.

Lynn, A. (2009). The digitally-born identity: The influence of social networking sites on teen identity. University of Denver. ProQuest Dissertations.: https://search-proquest-com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/304878257/abstract/AC20F24EE0DF458EPQ/1?accountid=10382

Quinlan, A. (2018). How technology and social media is undermining family relationships.https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/how-technology-and-social-media-is-undermining-family-relationships-1.3568291

Renner, N. (2019). How social media shapes our identity. https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-social-media-shapes-our-identity

Segal, J. (2021). Legand trends social media use in hiring: Assessing the risks. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0914-social-media-hiring.aspx

Thomas, L., Briggs, P., Hart, A., & Kerrigan, F. (2017). Understanding social media and identity work in young people transitioning to university. Comupters in Human Behavior, 76, 541-553.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.08.021