In an age of communication, an age of immediacy, and an age where distance carries no credence when it comes to connection, one would assume that humans are more confident, more social, more fulfilled, and happier than ever. However, in her TED Talk, Sherry Turkle explains why this assumption is incorrect in our current times. In fact, Turkle argues that screens are driving us to avoid in-person human connection in favor of online conversations; this, she continues, actually causes us to become lonelier despite living in an age of connectivity. Communication through technology gives us a sense of complete control of what we say, how we present ourselves, when and how we regulate contact, and with whom we decide to include. Yet, as we become more and more connected, we begin relying on that connectivity as a sense of our identity. Without connections, we are lonely; yet with connections, we are still lonely. Instead of seeking real-life human companions to solve this, Turkle explores how we instead “[design] technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control.”
Danah Boyd jumps off of this idea of connection and its ties to privacy. She draws an important distinction between being in public and being public. As Sherry Turkle exposed, technology is becoming even more of an integral part of our societal construction; as such, part of societal or cultural citizenship now involves participating in public online areas as much as it involved participating in “offline” public areas. This introduces questions of privacy that Boyd explores: teens are now looking to control what they share in which online mediums, as well as with whom they are looking to share specific content. Just as they may present themselves differently when they are home, at school, or with their friends, teens are looking for ways to control the context and audience of each of their personas. Boyd explains that teens are learning to encode meaning in different ways to reach their varying audiences: what may hold one meaning to an adult holds a completely different meaning to their peers. Since modern youth have grown up in a time of adults looking over their shoulder in an effort to keep them “safe”, they are finding ways to skirt this surveillance not through hiding, but through creating various forms of meaning.
I recognize this idea of differing personas on different platforms in my everyday life. Especially in high school, people would portray themselves in drastically-different ways depending on if you were looking at their Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat accounts. They would have different audiences on each medium: thematically, Facebook would be their most professional, family-oriented account, Instagram would be more for their friends, and Snapchat would be more on a day-to-day, current-feeling, private basis. Everyone was friends on Facebook, most people were followers on Instagram, and some were connected through Snapchat. The creation of different accounts on the same medium amplified the ability to jump between identities: a “regular” account hosted a specific, thought-out, and more public role while a “spam” account was a much more private, personalized, and free-range collection of anything that the user wanted to share. I find this absolutely fascinating; I recognize that this occurs and from a social, age-driven standpoint, I understand the philosophy, the rules, and the mechanics. However, this is so incredibly different from how I was raised that I am unable to divide my online identity into these varying categories.
A question I would pose to my peers is the following: do you think that the environment in which you were raised affected or influenced your ability to create and maintain varying online identities? In relation to technology and privacy, would you raise your children in the same way that you were raised, or would you change some things?
Emily's Blog 
Hi Emily, I agree with your points on regarding the TED Talk and the FOSI talk. I like how you highlighted the concept introduced by Turkle of how we are designing technologies that give us the illusion of companionship, and how you emphasized Boyd’s idea on teens learning to encode meaning in different ways to reach different audiences. I think it’s super interesting how you described the different audiences on each medium! I definitely see the three platforms the same way — Facebook being the most family-oriented and public, Instagram being more for friends, and Snapchat being the most private platform for day-to-day use.
To answer your question, I do think that the environment in which we are raised plays a big role in our ability to create and maintain varying online identities. For example, individuals who were raised by parents who were strict with the use of technology and social media would be better at finding ways to ‘skirt surveillance’ through creating different forms of meanings, while individuals who were raised by parents that were less strict with online supervision would not feel the need to do the same. Furthermore, if you were raised in a generation that placed so much emphasis on online identities, you would definitely be better at creating and maintaining various online identities. This can be seen by the fact that individuals from the younger generations are way better at doing this than those from the older generations. To answer your second question, I think the way we raise our children in the future will inevitably be different from the way we were raised in the past because I’m sure technology and privacy will have developed and changed so much by then.
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I definitely feel that the way we were raised influences the way we maintain social media identities. My Dad is a business executive and my Mom used to be a lawyer. They drilled into me that I should never post anything online that would reflect poorly on me, as employers will search for my profiles on the internet. The result was that I am always too fearful to post on any social media that can be traced back to me, so most of the social media accounts correlated with me are a barren wasteland. I used to be relatively active on twitter or twitch (game streaming site) under one of my online usernames, but I made certain it was not easily traceable back to me.
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I definitely think that the environment in which I was raised affected and influenced my ability to create and maintain varying online identities. I utilize the practice of multiple accounts on the same medium less, and more use different social media for different audiences in my life. In fact, I have a presence on some social media in which I only interact with a couple of my close friends (A.K.A. I have a tumblr to send my friends memes). This isn’t an effect of my parents, however (they had a very nominal presence in my digital upbringing), but it was more of an impact from my friends. The media that many friends have are the things that I communicate with more people on, and the more obscure apps are the ways in which I communicate with fewer people in a specific niche.
I would probably more explicitly teach my hypothetical children about the internet, but I would like to give them a similar freedom to explore and make their own choices. I believe that, on the whole, children make good choices if they are given the appropriate amount of background information.
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I do believe that the environment you grew up in would affect your social media presence, as it seemingly affects most parts of your life regardless (the environment, not the social presence- though that too may play some significance, especially today). Personally, I didn’t get a FaceBook account until I was a sophomore in high school, and only so I could join the color guard’s group. From there, basically the only reason I use FaceBook is for groups connecting to my academics/extracurriculars. When creating it, my mom was particularly sure to make sure I knew to keep things at like the highest privacy setting and to have caution posting my face online (who knows where it could end up, who could see you, etc.); my first few profile pictures weren’t even me, but drawings I made. Now, I most frequent Instagram, but primarily use an art account where I never show my face. I also use Snapchat, but primarily to contact one high school friend, and occasionally send my brother memes or whatever. Though, in another way, “living” through more anonymous accounts (like my art IG) lend some sense of freedom, in a way that I hadn’t quite had before; in the case of interacting with people who don’t know who you are, so you can be anyone, in a sense. (Not trying to say I’m cat fishing or something haha, but y’know, there’s in intriguing sense of anonymity in those cases (my case, not the cat fishing- though I guess that works too?)
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