SNS and identity

        A year ago I had to write a term paper for one of my classes and my topic was the impacts of Social Networking Service on the identity formation. I am one of those people who are really critical of SNS, so I mostly wrote about the negative impacts of SNS. Although I lost the links to many primary articles that I used for my paper, I want to share some of my thoughts. 
        On Wednesday we talked about how you can make your accounts, photos, posts, etc private, and how you can show them to a few selected people. I think SNS can be about how much you want to hide, but it can be also about how much you want to show. 
        One article that I read for my paper was about "imaginary audience." According to Wikipedia, imaginary audience is "an egocentric state where an individual imagines and believes that multitudes of people are enthusiastically listening to or watching him or her." The author of the article uses this concept to explain the psychological state of SNS users. Many people who write posts, status, etc unconsciously (and mistakenly) think that they are being watched by other people or they are at the center of attention, so they write things, assuming that other people will see their posts. So the author maintains that using SNS is the deliberate process of self-making. 
        This process can be very problematic because it is so easy to brag and exaggerate yourself. Your focus shifts from what you think about yourself to what others think about you. You only write and post things that would make yourself look like a better person and that is a big part of you, even when you know that the part of you that you are showing to the world is not so much about your true-self. 
        When everyone's deliberately constructing their own identities online, you can also become depressed because you start to compare yourself to others who seem to have a better life; they post about internships that they did over the summer, the job offer they've got, many awesome places they went to with their friends, all the partying, shopping, etc. Even if there is nothing wrong with your life, you start to feel inadequate. That there is also a research that found a relationship between Facebook use and depression is not even surprising. 
        People say SNS is a way of socializing and keeping in touch with people, but I think it does more harm than good when you are obsessed with it, because you will lose yourself.