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It is important to focus on the identity issue, deindividuation concept, as the digital identities created on social media platforms brings many fake identities and takes away one’s unique expression of herself/himself. It still is a problem today as there are ongoing researches and thesis on construction of digital identities and identity crisis. As stated by Doster millennial teens born between 1982-2002 are the target audience of this particular issue(2013,pg.268 ).These millennials struggle with their projection of profiles on social media “self-presentation strategies and drew on colour, design and symbolism to create complex, elaborate and decorative versions of self, which we have termed the ‘aesthetic self’” (Doster,2013,pg.267 ). It all becomes an issue about significant self-presentation, likes, views or retweets depending on the social media. The idea of belonging to a class or group creates such satisfaction and conformity that it is now a major part in one’s life. This prevents self-expressionism in a real way making them create virtual or fake identities that are close to being ‘perfect’ or at least it’s considered to be by society. The need of approval and acceptance destroys intimacy. Individuals are easily affected by society’s decisions and they change their behavior accordingly. This influence results in disappearance of the difference among people and individuality. The social media platforms “empowers users to access and manipulate an infinite range of digital symbols and create customised digital representations of themselves” (Doster,2013,pg.268).These effects of the social media on individuals’ personality will be dealt with this research project. The aim of this project is finding connections between normalizing power and effects of societies’ pressures on the social media. It will help to bring light on the driving force behind creation of fake or mimicked digital identities. What goal they are trying to achieve by doing it and how can it be stopped so that the social media/groups will no longer have influence on identity crisis. Doster stated that she “observed the emergence of the ‘aesthetic teen self’, a more elaborate stylised version of self, deliberately and painstakingly designed for their peers’ consumption” enlightening the path for solutions(2013,pg.277). The solution to this problem should include self-realization, knowing the ways you act and taking responsibility for it as well as the creation of consciousness about deindividuation. The illustration of research and surveys’ results will be helpful to show people how important and how difficult it is to protect self-awareness with digital identities. So, this research will hopefully result in the creation of awareness about the problem and it will help people to avoid deindividuation.

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References:

Doster, L. (2013). Millennial Teens Design and Redesign themselves in Online Social Networks, Journal of Consumer Behaviour,12: 267–279. DOI: 10.1002/cb.1407

image: https://www.threegirlsmedia.com/2019/06/10/how-to-create-stellar-updates-for-each-social-media-platform-2/