Our Visibility Online Deters Us From Becoming Our Truest Selves

Jasmine Kim
La Canada High School 10th Grade

Social media is a place where people gather to share their personal life and opinions online. It is a place where people can be hypercritical. At times it’s where people make their first impression, which is why I can understand people’ s struggle to make themselves look perfect in every picture they post and write“profound” thoughts and cliche quotes to make themselves look smarter and thoughtful. People say that social media can help express yourself even further. However, my thoughts are the reverse- it deters us from becoming our truest selves.

Since social media really opens yourself to the public, so there’ s a lot of pressure to look presentable. “How will these people see me?” or “How will people react to this picture?” or“ Do I look fat in this?” are only a few questions that come up in people’ s head before posting something online. The way people portray themselves in social media is not a true portrayal, but how they want others to see them. In the story,

“Usl at the Stadium” by Rivka Galchen, when Usl’ s mother was asked about her son, Usl -who became famous after a video of him sleeping at a Yankee’ s game was posted -she said, “Many people thought that. You can’ t let them think that- it will affect your future employment. I explained that you drink only Diet Coke.” when she was standing up for Usl after a video of him sleeping was posted online. This was her instant reply when she wasn’ t even asked about his physical appearance in the video. She was clearly unsatisfied about her son’ s appearance on that video and didn’ t want people to think that he was some unemployed, lazy drunk. If social media was something that help us build our personal identi- ties, she would’ ve said something along the lines of,“Yes, Usl likes to eat pizza!” or maybe nothing at all.