Does our attention to facebook correlate with our self-esteem? -- Assignment 4

For the fourth assignment, I chose to do the second option, and used my brother as my subject. After a little bit of explaining, I got him to rate several different elements of his facebook profile on how they represented the "real-life him". Since I'd say I know him better than just about anyone, and he obviously didn't mind admitting any false representation, I felt that he was honest even to the point of self-deprecation. The elements I chose for this assignment were profile picture, relationship status, photos tagged of him, and groups and personal info.

For the profile picture, he first gave himself a 5, then changed his mind to a 4. Since the picture is of him and three of his frat brothers, and he is smiling in a bit of an affected manner, he felt that the picture was not entirely representative of the way he presents himself face-to-face. The next element I asked him about was relationship status. As others have previously insinuated, the relationship status aspect of facebook is one that is at once very significant and potentially deceptive. In my opinion, it is perhaps the most drama-inspiring element of the entire facebook profile page. When I asked my brother to rate its accuracy (he is listed as "single"), he laughed, then vacillated between 2 and 3, finally deciding on 3. At the moment, he is currently seeing a girl, but they aren't officially dating, hence the still "single" status. However, he wouldn't consider himself entirely single, but at the same time he doesn't want to be too forward and change the status before the appropriate amount of time has passed and the relationship is cemented.

Moving on to the next element, I inquired what he thought about the validity of his photos tagged of him. I chose this element because it is definitely one of the most looked-at elements on facebook. Perhaps for this reason, I came into the experiement thinking that people are most conscious of the photos tagged of them, and more inclined to "de-tag" pictures that they feel do not represent their ideal selves. In my brother's case, however, he gave himself a higher rating of 4. He said the only reason he didn't give a 5 was because the vast majority of the pictures displayed on facebook were taken when he was out with friends at night, and failed to represent the other aspects of his life. Next was facebook groups and personal info. I group the two together because he gave the same response for both elements: 3. His reasoning was that he does not often update either element and the last time he updated them was at least a year ago. Clearly, he has changed his interests and hobbies since then, and even his groups of friends.

In analyzing my brother's responses to my questions, I believe that he was just about dead-on, with the exception of his tagged photos. When he gave the accuracy of his photos a 4, he over-attributed the importance of his social life, forgetting that facebook only portrays how he acts in one situation. None of his photos, for example, showed him at any sports events or at home with his family and dog, all things that take a place of importance in his life.

When viewing my brother's facebook profile in light of his real-life self-presentation and the theories we have studied, I believe that my findings are not in conjunction with digital-deception theories. The majority of the deception taking place on my brother's facebook profile is simply due to his lack of effort in the upkeep of his online image, and therefore his actions were not deliberately deceptive. Therefore, I do not believe that one could say that the discrepancies between real life and my brother's online persona are due to any cognizant decision on his part to decieve any potential visitors to his profile. While one might at first point to the Social Distance Theory and say that he is distancing himself from others by not keeping his image up-to-date, I know that it is really due to a lack of motivation on his part to present the exact same persona online as in real-life. I think some of his openness can be accredited to his own self-confidence and his feeling that he really has no aspect of himself that he would like to hide. Instead, he presents only what is convenient for him to present given his busy schedule as a junior in college and his low level of interest in improving his image to those who see him more often online than in real life.

On this note, I think it would be interesting to draw a connection between people's satisfaction with their real selves and the amount of time they spend perfecting their ideal selves on facebook. Perhaps those with more fragile self-esteems feel the need to build themselves up superficially by spending more time in their ideal world, fine-tuning the people that they pretend to be every time they log-in to facebook. It would be an interesting study, to say the least.