Social Meadia

        One could say social media brings people all over the world together unlike anything else. The argument of whether it pulls people in or pushes them away is a broad and vast one with viable cases for either side. George Herbert Mead presents a theory about society. He presents the social philosophy of the “I and Me” theory. The “I and Me” theory goes like this, the “Me” is what is learned from society, so for example, a child learns that it has a gender from the responses of other people around them telling them they have one. They learn how to act appropriately in their given society and what is expected out of them. The reactions people have to you teaches you certain ways to act and in turn react back to them. Another way to word it is, “the norms society places on us as individuals” (Mead: The Me, the I and the Selfie], 2015). This learned part of yourself is the “Me.” The “Me” can be drastically different for everyone based on what kind of society they live in and where they live on the map. For instance, if you lived in China versus America the beauty standards would most likely be drastically different, so people would have learned a different ideal to set themselves up against. The “I” is the part of yourself that responds to these norms society is expecting us to hold up to. Mead concluded that the “I” and the “Me” together make up the self and that without both of them people would have no hope of having any form of personality.

        A perfect example of Mead’s “Me” in society and on social media today is photoshop editing. You see it constantly on every airbrushed and altered post filling up our feeds. There is no end to the pictures that are “perfected” on our social media pages. Photoshop is an example of our reaction to what we think society expects of us. To live up to the high standards and unrealistic expectations on social media, we think we need to create an image of ourselves that is flawless. We can’t be our whole original self with the whisperings of society in our ears. It has become the norm on social media for people to photoshop and alter photos of themselves. I think this comes from the “Me” and the menacing “general other” voices that we hear. Social media fosters this kind of behavior and it shines through with the photoshop trend that we are experiencing.

        Social media allows people to express their inner “I’s” in a way that they might feel uncomfortable or unwelcome to do in public or in “real” life. For example, there is a strong LGBTQ+ community that feels free to be out on social media when they can't come out to there families. Social media gave them an outlet to express themselves in a way that they couldn't in their everyday lives. Anthony, a member of this online community expressed this by saying, "I get to be my truest self on here and with my friends, and that's what matters the most to me." Social media is a safe haven for people that are scared or can't be themselves normally. On the other hand, social media also allows its users to alter reality and advertise the socially sculpted “Me.” In doing so someone might offer an image of their life that can cause others to scrupulously examine their own. People often are left with the idea that their lives aren’t as good, exciting, or fulfilling as they should be after experiencing this. Is it wrong to share a reality that isn’t necessarily the truth to help ourselves feel better about our lives if it could potentially harm someone else's? At the same time though, people should be aware that anything on the internet has the potential of alterations, so should the poster really be held accountable for what they share or is it also the viewers responsibility to look at social media with a grain of salt? Mead talks about everyone having “general others” that they mold themselves to fit around what society tells them they should be like. It would seem that any type of alteration on reality would continue this circle of inspection on our lives. People get used to seeing the “perfect” picture of others’ highlight reels and they base the way their lives should be on that.

        Lee Humphreys brings up the point in her book “The Qualified Self” that sharing our lives publicly is not necessarily a new concept since social media came into play. People have been logging their lives in journals and diaries since the dawn of paper and ink. These diaries would often be shared with family and friends for various reasons. The highlight of the reasons being travel journals, which aren’t we all more inclined to post pictures when we’re on vacation? It’s a given that the social aspect might not have been for the same reason since journals were less likely to get hearts and thumbs up, but they still had a sense of publicly documenting their lives. “This is not to suggest that the diary or any form of media accounting is necessarily the truth or fact” Humphreys says, even diaries and journals could not be entirely the whole truth. People would have been writing about the interesting and unique parts of their lives like travel and special occurrences, not the mundane, boring parts like, emptying the bed pans or milking the cow, that no one is interested in. So even then people would have found an unrealistic point of view on everyday life in these diaries.

        Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook are all examples of our modern day journals and diaries where we record the interesting and unique parts of our own lives with the world. These social media platforms have allowed for an almost instant reaction to the entries of our daily life as we have portrayed it. How many likes someone might get could even determine how they feel about their day or about the moment of it that they decided to share. It can have an extreme effect on the way people view themselves and others. Deciding what is an acceptable amount of likes in order for a post to not be deleted or feeling conflicted as to the reason that one friend of yours did not like or comment on your post are examples of the effect social media has on our conscience and view of ourselves. People can certainly get sucked into the idea that the amount of followers you have or the ratio of followers to following you have determines your social worth. Maybe people use social media just to feel some sense of human social connection in an age where technology rules and dictates all, or perhaps this is just another false representation of reality posted on the internet.

Sources

Humphreys, Lee. The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life. The MIT Press, 2018.

Erikafern86. Mead: The Me, the I and the Self[ie]. Shifting Paradigms, 2015. https://rampages.us/efcarpenter/2015/10/04/mead-the-me-the-i-and-the-selfie/