Social Media and The Self: Do They Really Mead to be Separate? (by Montrell Wiley)

When we look at each other's social media accounts, what is usually the first thing that you think of? That's dependent on whose account it is and their relationship toward you of course, since Linda was a hag towards you and everything she posts is offensive in your eyes. What about famous people? It seems like their life is always glamorous and happy. They post their fancy cars and big houses but you never see them post the paperwork and insurance agreements and contracts etc. needed to acquire all of those things. Not only that, most celebrities would never post anything about their personal life because once it's out in the public, their image will be affected whether it's positively or negatively. This applies to everyone who uses social media, although maybe not as drastic seeing as we don't all have a million followers. So what do we do to avoid this possible embarrassment? Or should we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and reveal our true selves online? We will get to that later, but for now let's look at George Herbert Mead's theories that we can easily apply to this situation.

Mead, a social philosopher, studied the connection between the self, mind, and society. An important take away from his theories is understanding the Generalized Other. Mead believes that the attitude of the entire community is the Generalized Other, and it can control most of what we believe ourselves to be. We never know what is socially acceptable until someone tells us what is. Take for example the experiment of "Five Monkeys and a Ladder" where each following monkey only did what their community of monkeys did without even knowing the reason. Our actions and personalities sometimes don't feel like our own and are just reflexes to peer pressure and society's rules, and we lose our true selves (if it's even possible to have one) because of this.


So since all of our actions are influenced by the Generalized Other, that means that every post we post online isn't actually for ourselves and that it is only there to follow what everyone else does or wants to see. This can be true in most cases, but there are times where we can manage to truly open up our struggles, triumphs, or fears to people online despite the controversy. Take Scott Simon, a Weekend Edition Saturday talk-show host, for an example. Scott has more than 1.2 million Twitter followers, so the influence of his Generalized Other will greatly affect his actions online. However, it did not stop him from posting his most sensitive moment in his life: the final days he spent with his dying mother. With only a month left before her 85th birthday, Patricia Lyons Simon Newman died after being brought in for an emergency operation. Scott documented his experience and shared it to the public of over a million people. He exposed his emotions, grief, and unique experience that no one would ever want to go through, let alone share, to so many people. Not only that, he also exposed his mother to the outside world as well. So was Scott in the wrong? Did he post his own mother's death just for the "clout"? Or was it all genuine and a step toward resisting the urge to hide our humanity? Scott was quoted as saying "I don't think it's any less sacred because it was shared with a lot of people and it must be said, you know, there was a lot of stuff that I didn't share. There was a lot of stuff that I will tell only my wife and maybe someday my children. I certainly had a sense of proportion and delicacy. I don't think my mother knew much about Twitter or social media platforms but I would read her an occasional message from someone in Australia, someone in Great Britain or Singapore and she was very touched. ...I didn't tweet anything and wouldn't have that I didn't think she would be totally comfortable with." (NPR Staff, Scott Simon On Sharing His Mother's Final Moments On Twitter)


Well, there is no sure way of knowing all of his intentions of his posts, but by using Mead's theory on the Generalized Other we can get an idea. His community of followers ate up his posts (in a good way) and proved themselves as loyal Twitter followers. They supported his posts and empathized with Scott, which I imagine made him feel less alone in his situation. I think that whether or not he posted his experience for attention, followers, or to have himself heard is beside the overall result of him fusing his social media presence with his true feelings.

This idea of merging personal hardship and social media isn't new. #HalfTheStory is a non-profit social media research project that gives people a chance to voice their stories of their struggles with depression. It aims to "highlight our most human attributes on social media to reignite human connection in the digital space" (halfthestoryproject.com) by giving people a platform that welcomes genuine and heartfelt conversation. It truly proves to us that we should reevaluate how we use social media and tells us that we can display our true selves online without hiding behind rainbows and butterflies all of the time.