"Did you add him on Facebook?"
"No but I found him, and look at all this ~stuff~ I found out!"
"Wow, he seems really cool~"
This is an exaggerated example of what I think a lot of young people say when they meet someone that they want to know more about. We see someone we like and one of the first things that comes to our mind is that we want to know more, we want to see more—and we know where to find it.
When it comes to social media, I think that I speak for many of us when I say that I love finding ~stuff~ out about people I'm interested in. We can simply find people's profiles and construct ideas of what we interpret their personality may be. Today our world is so connected through social medias that whether we're searching for a director, a famous singer, or that cute guy who sits across from your friends, we can usually find them on at least one of the world's many media platforms. Our initial or ongoing interest in someone is very natural; if we are interested in what we see, then we want to see more, know more. Thanks to the invention of medias such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, we don't have to wait for that person to pass us by or hear about them from others, for we can now conveniently stalk them ourselves!
Although looking at social medias can give us a sense of who someone may be, this approach has its drawbacks if we are using only social medias as our basis of a person. A media outlet is only one small part of us as a whole, and by looking at someone or ourselves through the lens of an internet outlet, we make ourselves subject to subconscious stereotyping, giving personality traits that may not be true, and falling victim to internet fallacy. This also removes us as humans from communicating interpersonally to making judgements impersonally through the lens of a stagnant computer screen.
Via social media platforms, we tend to construct the version of ourselves we most want to be perceived as. On our profiles we can pick and choose what factors we want people to see; we have a vision of ourselves, and through ascribing ourselves as one thing or the other we assign ourselves an "identity and act it out" (Stewart, et. al, p.96). Hence, we only post the items we want to be perceived as, and not necessarily all that we want to share with the world. This can be limiting when thinking of ourselves in terms of how others will view us because if we share only what we think others want to see, we hide from ourselves our true natures for the sake of not breaking a status quo. We know people talk, and we know that they judge, and with social media this is more of a problem than ever. We are highly aware of the fact that if we do not talk with people directly, that if they find us on media they can construct their own ideas of us.
Through this, social media is an intense breeding ground for subconscious stereotyping. On the opposite end of the avowing spectrum is ascribing, the process where we assign traits to someone which they "may or may not agree with" themselves (Stewart, et. al, p.96). Any predisposed ideas of someone pertaining to race, coolness, or other defining personality traits based on only appearances/brief notes falls into this category of profile-based stereotyping.
An example of this is when one may see someone they think they know, find out that they are certain religion, and change an opinion that they initially had of the person. They could see the religion and believe that the person is kinder, or see a religion (or lack of) that changes their desire to know the person better. This is an extreme example of religious stereotyping, and unfortunately an example of how the internet can make us impersonal to the point where we prefer to read and conclude about someone rather than ask them directly.
Through being aware of these two ends of our social media perception, we can take the step of taking the time to talk or message others ourselves to communicate interpersonally, rather than falling into an impersonal cycle of social-profiling and judging that cute guy that sits across from our friends.
Works Cited
Stewart, John. Zediker, Karen E. Witteborn, Saskia. Together Communicating Interpersonally A Social Construction Approach 6th Edition. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2015. Print.
