Self Identity in the Digital Age
Who am I? It is a question many of us ask throughout our lifetimes and most probably start considering in our teenage years when we go all rebel on our parents. In today’s digital world, we are flooded with so many ways to, well, be. Will this make it harder to find our self, or easier? As usual, it’s nuanced. And complicated.
One of the wondrous aspects of social media is that we are able to share our lived experiences with one another more broadly and more intimately. While there is good and bad with social media, as with any communications technology, it does offer us a unique glimpse into what it means to be human on a global scale.
But the self is not a fixed entity. Our self is dynamic, mutable and ever changing. Our self evolves as we age, influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, cultural and social forces.
Up until the arrival of our current digital age, the influences on our self were fairly contained and changes to the self were, arguably, fairly slow. When we lived far apart, wandering about the planet munching on berries and things, we lived in small groups. External influences were relatively rare. Our social settings changed very little. Our self evolved, but within fairly stringent social systems.
Fast forward to today and we can, through a screen, explore how someone lives in…
