SelfIE Assessment and the Real Self: Week 5

Selfie. One word. But it means so much.

It's for the Kylie Jenner's of the world to get likes and compliments and feel good about themselves.

It's a way to capture a moment when there's no one to capture it for you.

It's about angles and filters, or it's about showing what's real. 

Which lately, I feel like a lot people have. I was scrolling through my social media and realized so many of the people I follow post selfies. TONS AND TONS of selfies! And I started reading them. I found they were incredibly vulnerable and empowering. For example, I follow a lot of teachers, who constantly are posting about the peaks and pits of the profession, which are normally accompanied by a picture of their exhausted face, messy hair, messy room, or stack of ungraded papers that will still be there on Monday because we have lives too! I also happen to follow a lot of new moms, who have been very honest and vocal about their struggles postpartum. The images they share of their new bodies, along with their emotional struggles, is empowering. 

We spoke in class about how most selfies people put out to the world are the image they want people to see. The perfect hair, makeup, body, or life right? But more and more people are starting to use social media as a platform to help others. To make others feel less alone, or to raise awareness and show people's real true life. I think the world needs more of these kinds of selfies. The real self. 

But then the next question is how far does that go? In talking about self representation in the digital age, I have a lot of concerns. We talked in class about Finstas-fake instagrams that function as a digital diary, and how teenagers are using this space to share their lives. While we heard they are more vulnerable on their Finstas, it's concerning because they are still only sharing certain sides of themselves. My concern is that even as a full fledged adult who is confident in who she is, there have definitely been times where seeing something on social media has affected my mental state. Like maybe I saw something cool someone was doing and then I wanted to do that more than what I was actually doing. This is problematic. But I have learned to handle it and recognize not to let others lives define mine. How do you teach that to a teenager when they're bombarded with those kinds of images all the time? As a parent, how do you monitor it? How do you really know what they're doing?