Abstract
Adolescence is a point at which young people are seeking answers to the questions: “Who am I?” and “How do I show up in the world?”, and social media is playing an increasingly integral part. Rather than social media being seen to facilitate realness, often users are criticised for being fake and self-absorbed, inhabiting an online world in which there is a pervasive narrative of that which is unreal (Gardner & Davies, The app generation. Yale University Press, 2014; Turkle, Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books, 2012). However, adolescence is a time of flux with young people moving between childlike states and more adult versions of themselves, and back again (Grosz, Becomings: Explorations in time, memory, and futures. Cornell University Press, 1999; Parallax, 11(2), 4–13, 2005). While younger children frequently exist unjudged, moving between imaginary play spaces and real-world happenings, experiencing a version of reality within them both, for a teenager within the context of self-presentation on social media, this seems to be problematised. Conversely, this chapter argues that there is merit in foregrounding the childlike moments of adolescent behaviour to reframe perceptions of their online self-presentation. Pretend play, storytelling, and “as if” afford users space to make-believe, and as a result, these can serve to scaffold the move to more grown-up moments of adolescent self, in just the same way they do for the developing child. As a result, this chapter relocates discussion to focus upon the role of play, imagination, and stories within healthy (child) development. Drawing upon educationalists and philosophers ranging from Vygotsky to Sartre, this chapter argues that Social Networking Sites offer many a different and productive way of engaging with their world. The goal of the chapter is to sensitise more than convince, in order that our understanding of young people’s online behaviour is open to more flexible, less consistently negative interpretations. The aim is to provide a more complex view of the relationship adolescents have with their social media accounts.
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Notes
- 1.
Gardner and Davies (2014) discuss this further.
- 2.
Guardian 11 March 2013.
- 3.
Turkle (1997) discusses this in depth.
- 4.
Gardner and Davies (2014) discuss this at length.
- 5.
The ways in which young people can be seen to be developing their real sense of self using the virtual (in the context of “as if” as well as the technological interpretation) offer a way to reframe the problem of “fake” online existence. The way we understand the word virtual is to be questioned, as it seems the notion of fake has become conflated with virtual (technological). There is a narrative where both fake and virtual equal bad, whether that virtual means “online” or “not completely or according to strict definition” (Oxford Dictionary 2021). Perhaps an assumption that virtual presence is bad is because we have been encouraged into a habit of thought in which we look behind or beyond images for the “real”, as if it had been obscured by the object itself. This implies there is an internal “real” self that requires uncovering or clarifying, one that is concealed from the real world or even the individual in some way.
- 6.
Snaps are the photos produced when engaging in the app Snapchat. Although it now has a wider range of options for users, the app Snapchat was initially focused on private, person-to-person photo sharing. The content is ephemeral and disappears after a short time of viewing. Users will send many “snaps” (photographs) to one another in short periods of time as a way of maintaining friendships and ensuring up social connection. The content can be conceived of as phatic communication.
- 7.
Pokémon GO is a GPS-enabled game that asks players to walk around their neighbourhoods and hunt down Pokémon (a cartoon character). Players view the offline world through their camera, and the GO game will then add Pokemon to appear in augmented reality in semi-random physical locations as they walk around hunting. When a player finds one, the game activates the phone’s camera and shows them the Pokémon. It appears on the screen as if they are really there.
- 8.
This, according to Belk (2013), is a far more effective mirror and has a stronger effect than others’ feedback alone. This has been exemplified in the Proteus effect; psychological experiments have shown that people can change after even small amounts of time “wearing” an avatar. A taller avatar increases people’s confidence, and this boost persists later in the physical world. It also appears that a more attractive avatar makes people more sociable, an older one leads to a more responsible approach to finance, and a physically fit one makes people exercise more (Blascovich, 2011). Therefore, by developing one’s “real” online self to the extent that one essentially becomes it or comes to think of one’s self in much the same way as an avatar, an individual can inhabit this liminal space—becoming a virtually real self.
- 9.
This was reproduced from an article in Quartz (Fessler, 2018/2022) with further permission granted from Tracy Clayton @brokeymcpoverty 22/01/2020.
- 10.
Also contained in the Quartz article and further permission granted from @KrisMissTime 24/01/2020.
- 11.
Les Mots (1963; Words) as cited in (Boule, 2005).
- 12.
Permission to reproduce the images kindly granted by Sham Udin May 2019.
- 13.
- 14.
The nickname of Bengali tiger has been applied to revolutionaries in the past: Bengali revolutionary Jatindranath Mukherjee was nicknamed Bagha Jatin; a political cartoon from 1857 edition of Punch in which Indian rebels were depicted as tigers.
- 15.
The film Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (2010) is based on the true story of a tiger that escaped from the Baghdad Zoo in 2003 and haunts the streets of Baghdad seeking the meaning of life (Joseph, 2012).
- 16.
- 17.
Teenager from north London interviewed as part of a workshop on e-safety 2019.
- 18.
Pretend play is closely connected with language development and acquisition amongst children, for example, McCune-Nicolich (1981) and McCune (1995) showed that complexity in play is associated with subsequent analogous development in language production. Numerous studies have also identified a closely coupled relationship between play and early spoken language development (e.g. Bornstein et al., 1992; Kelly & Dale, 1989; Lewis et al., 2000; McCune-Nicolich, 1981; Ogura, 1991; Shore et al., 1984).
- 19.
The use of capital “S” on Stories denotes a specific application/function within a social media platform, using a lowercase “s” is for the broader concept of a story or tale.
- 20.
Although Instagram does give users the option to save some stories to their highlights reel to view again.
- 21.
Online this accountability problematises the nonliterality of posts. The airbrushing is taken as concrete reality and people measure themselves (and are measured) against this perceived reality. One example of this is body image as airbrushed images can uphold unrealistic body shapes as attainable ideals.
- 22.
Turkle (1995, p. 178)
- 23.
Other platforms, however, such as Instagram allow for a non-linear approach, presenting the individual through tiles that could be described as a quilt or mosaic. Although they are non-linear it is still worth noting that they form a regular, organised pattern and they form a sequence of representations, ultimately connecting the parts to a whole, if not a centre. The tiles on an Instagram account offer a sense of unity if not a middle.
- 24.
Understood as a person’s internalised and evolving life story, in which they integrate the reconstructed past and imagined future to provide life with some degree of unity and purpose.
- 25.
McAdams and McLean (2013).
- 26.
As Taylor (2014) refers to it.
- 27.
Mihailidis and Cohen (2013).
- 28.
Mihailidis and Cohen (2013).
- 29.
- 30.
Barthes (1993).
- 31.
Sontag (1977).
- 32.
In Sartre’s Nausea, one of the protagonists speaks of creating “aventures” in her life. These “aventures”, are not daring adventures, but trivial moments that she shapes into a framework, that give form to formless time, and thus create meaning out of meaninglessness. She calls them “perfect moments” that she can re-live at will and thus appreciate and understand her life. The same could be said with regards to the online world. People often post boring or mundane content making the everyday seem like an event.
- 33.
Discussed further in Stephen Braide’s First Person Plural (Braude, 1995).
- 34.
esse est percipi (aut percipere)—to be is to be perceived (or to perceive).
- 35.
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Mace, R. (2024). A Real Virtual Self. In: Setty, E., Gordon, F., Nottingham, E. (eds) Children, Young People and Online Harms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46053-1_2
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