My friend, James, is a budding accountant.
We grew up together and know each other well in personal life. He has been on Facebook for more than 10 years and loves to post pictures of himself in social media lately. In his Facebook account, he is the typical introvert accountant from his ‘professional’ profile. James has led a normal average middle-class life, although he always saw himself as a rich man and has always purported to join the ranks of renowned business gurus one day. To this effect, he chose to study Finance and Accounting, as seen in one of his posts, “Studying about money inside out, I am the next Carlos Slim Helu.”
The Early Effect of ‘Deindividuation’
Self-concept describes the beliefs people hold about or how they perceive themselves. It can be influenced by the environment that one interacts in or social roles they assume (22). When he was a child, James wanted to become a pilot. However, during early school, everyone held the belief that aviation was expensive and the middle class could not afford it. The belief had been instilled in us by an influential teacher who believed so. The ‘deindividuation’ effect affected many people, James being one of them, totally diverting his intrinsic self-image. In his posts, he has now adopted the face of an accountant and a professional whose social life only revolves around academics and the world of figures.
James’s Ideal Self
Social media is a tool which defines people’s social roles, hence determining their self concept in the form of the ideal self (Gleave 24). For James, choosing to have virtual friends who come from wealthier circles has made him to develop low self-esteem. The real James I know is distinct from the self he posts in Facebook. I believe he is using the forum to describe his ideal self. From his posts, he contends that he would like to become a Financial Consultant and open his own firm. Apart from me, most of his friends in Facebook are either working professionals or students from his own class.
Virtual Values
The values that James expresses through Facebook are those of integrity and transparency. He sees himself as a rich consultant and poses with working-class friends who drive posh cars. James associates his career with wealth. At one time, he posted, “I am slowly becoming who I should have been,” a post which depicted a rich family man who had just wedded and arrived at his personal home with his new wife. To this end, I believe James sees his ideal self as a rich Finance and Accounting consultant and a family man.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness refers to the magnitude at which one currently fixes attention on their own self-concept. Almost transforming into a self-consciousness state, James has developed a strong sense of awareness in the form of public self-awareness. The latter occurs when people are aware of how they appear to others (Cherry and Carla 1). Recently, I tried to post a picture of us together at a party. He quickly removed it from his wall. The typical James is a reckless person whose self-schema is questionable when one sees his Facebook posts. He drinks a lot at a young age and I have found myself in trouble when I had to save him from embarrassment in many situations. It is a weakness that he is aware of and always suspects that his professional friends could know this fact. For this reason, one of his posts read, “What I would never become in my entire life” and exhibited the picture of a drunken man sitting down with a bottle of beer. When one of his friends posted, “I guess you have been a drunkard at one point in life, everyone has been” James replied many times, not only portraying a humongous extent of self-awareness but also self- consciousness. He charged at the friend for finger-pointing and false blame, an unnecessary reaction that made it so obvious he was hiding something behind his ‘meek’ and ‘professional’ self. James rarely creates his own posts. Rather, he shares other people’s or reposts career pictures and has only about three updates of his original making from this year. He is also quick to react to status updates that condemn drinking, and points out that people should not judge others in a scenario that mimics a self-reference response action. His real life and ideal self values are divergent, prompting him to form a high sense of self-awareness.
Virtual Friends’ Reaction as a Sculptor of Self-Concept
People’s reaction to others can determine whether they develop high or low self-esteem, which in turn implies a powerful impact on human cognition and behavior (Baumeister 3) For James, most people’s reactions are always neutral or negative. Because he typically appears as a person struggling to define himself, many people have taken advantage of this to mock him. James has developed low self esteem and has a bad attitude towards everyone, even genuine friends. He always has a reactive attitude. Last week, he shared a friend’s post that stated, “Slipping does not mean falling,” which I read as a reference to himself after failing a unit. Garnering no single Facebook like, I reacted to the post simply by writing “true”, a comment which seems to have provoked James. Self-esteem can also be affected by comparing oneself to their social circles (Gleave 24). Such a factor could have contributed to James’s recent self-esteem, considering the struggle he puts in to reach the status of his wealthy virtual circles that his ideal self pushed him into befriending. My friend is a perfect case of a person whose self-concept has been utterly shaped by social media.
Works Cited
Baumeister, Roy F., ed. Self-esteem: The puzzle of low self-regard. Springer Science " Business Media, 2013: 3
Cherry, Kendra, and G. Carla. "What is self-awareness." About Education
(2015): 1.
Gleave, Eric, et al. "A conceptual and operational definition of'social role'in online community." System Sciences, 2009. HICSS'09. 42nd Hawaii International Conference on. IEEE, 2009: 24
Hattie, John. Self-concept. Psychology Press, 2014: 22
