Why Mainstream Social Networks Complicate Our Identities, an article on mashable.com (online news site focusing on digital culture, social media and technology) by Jaime Beckland in September 2011 brings light to social media and identity. Beckland is a “Digital and Social Media Strategist” and in doing that he helps companies utilize social media in their businesses. This is ideal in today’s society and Web 2.0. When the Internet was first created, people thought it was primarily going to be used for information and personal web pages. When Web 2.0 hit the world, the focus shifted to what we primarily use the Internet for – social networking/media. If you’re not online, you’re not important … you don’t exist.

Beckland’s article brings up two key points.

#1 You can have different personas for each different social media outlet you use. This stems from the thought that you have a different facet of yourself when you’re at work, school, with friends, with family, and strangers. The way Beckland addressed it though, made me feel like I could potentially have split personalities like how Nicki Minaj raps as different characters. Does this make us better people or make us even more psychologically and maybe even sociologically challenged? We don’t feel like being the family-man today, so I’m gonna tweet as a swinger. Of course, most people who utilize social media probably don’t have multiple personalities to that extreme, but if you’re friends on Facebook with your classmates, co-workers, and family members what if there are things you want to post as your status that might offend one of those groups. I think it all the time… I want to post ” I HATE WORKING ON GROUP PROJECTS,” but I can’t because I’m friends with those people who are pissing me off and what kind of person are they going to think of me now? I used to think that social media was the coolest thing because it is a mix of having your own personal web page with your own ideas and thoughts mixed in with the social aspects of friends.. now I feel like I have to watch what I say because you never know who is reading what you write.

#2 Beckland brings up a good point about social baggage and interpersonal relationships. Oddly enough, this morning I was thinking of a friend of mine in Toluca Lake/Burbank (Southern CA even though I live in Northern CA now). He’s a 19-year-old friend that I made while working at Starbucks. We’re friends on Facebook, but when ever am I going to see or talk to him again? I hope he’s doing well because he and his boyfriend are the sweetest couple in the world, but why are we still friends on FB? Just to keep in contact I suppose, but many of the people we network with these days are people you wouldn’t normally talk to if you saw them on the street. I’m totally guilty of that. I go to church and see one or two of my FB friends, but I’m not going to go out of my way to physically say “hi.” It’s like social media allows us to be people hoarders.

This reading blog has really changed my thinking of how Internet culture affects my thinking and relationship with others. It even makes me wonder about the whole world and where it is going based on technology and sociology.