Identity has experienced a significant transformation in the modern digital age, transcending conventional concepts to become a fluid, complex, and socially constructed phenomenon that is shaped within online communities and platforms. Moreover, not only does it increase the contexts in which people create and perform their identities, digital technologies such as social media, online gaming, and interactive forums have also brought about new expansions regarding authenticity, agency, and social control.
Erving Goffman’s research defines identity as a performative act like theatrical presentation, where individuals regulate impressions based on audience and context. Digital environments enhance and complicate performance, allowing individuals to select and organise various context-dependent identities while interacting across multiple online platforms. Individuals therefore make choices about their identity and lifestyle this way. However, the media presents diverse and contradictory messages that individuals can use to determine their identities and self-expression.
This is evident in old media as well as new since for example, in the 1960s women read magazines to get ideas on how to act as housewives and mothers and therefore formed their identity around the images and information presented to them. Whereas old media tended to have singular and straight forward ideas, new and online media gives people a strong sense of being active in the world through the making and exchanging of information and ideas. In new media, audiences are now able to engage in a more diverse range of stars, icons and characters from whom we pick and mix ideas.
On the other hand, it is incredibly easy to manipulate personas online as social media allows fake profiles, deception and manipulation which can easily create dishonesty which also turns digital spaces into social mistrust. In addition to this social dishonesty, scholars such as Sherry Turkle note that platforms force users into a burden of constant self-presentation and persona maintenance which has truly disrupted people’s true authentic self in the digital age as some people may be too anxious to show their true authenticity on their social media page. Factors like this is what turns identity into something completely different such as an exhausting job rather a natural expression of self.
Through my experience of using social media in the digital age, I noticed that I also struggle to show my true authenticity as I do find myself thinking about how I want to present myself on my social media page. This could link to Erving Goffman’s research as I am actively putting on a performative act based on my audience and context as I want to show the side of me that aligns to their preferences and what they relate to. Personally, I realised that putting on a theatrical presentation online is mostly essential as it’s necessary to show the side of you that people who follow your page enjoy if you are at least have some authenticity within it and feel as if you’ve found the right community.
References
Dr. R.N., Tripathi, (2024), ‘The social construction of identity in the digital age: Virtual communities and self-presentation’, International Journal of Social Science Research, Available at: https://www.ijssr.com/papers/volume-1/issue-4/ijssr30531.pdf
Hussein, Hnit. and Ali, Almanna. (2025), ‘Constructing identity through narratives: Personal, social, and digital engagements’, Social Sciences & Humanities Open, Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291125004206
