The construction of theidentity it has always been played between body, memory And social recognition. Today, with the massive diffusion of socialthe terrain on which the self is formed has shifted: no longer just physical relationships and autobiographical narratives, but digital tracks that remainaccumulate, are processed and reinterpreted by algorithms.
The question is no longer whether our own exists “digital double”but how much this double is able to deviate from us, influence us or even overcome our real presence. Psychology, neuroscience, digital sociology and philosophy converge on one point: lo online space it is not accessory but constitutes a very complex reality.
How social media transforms digital and real identity
The theories classics of Erving Goffman on the “staging of the self” they find moles social their natural amplification. According to Goffman, every social interaction is one performance. This performance, transposed into the digital world of social media and cloudsnot only is it continuous, but above all recorded and long-lasting: traces of it will be kept indefinitely.
Sherry Turklein his pioneering sociological work, highlighted how the multiplication of online profiles create self paralleltherefore different digital images of oneself, each built according to the logic of the specific platform in use. So it would seem that for each different platform our self changes but it is itself. On TikTok we would therefore be more inclined to post certain contents, compared to LinkedIn, Instagram or dating apps like Hinge.
In this sense, a new branch of studies, called digital neuroscience, confirms that our mind does not fully distinguish between real recognition And mediated or media recognition: the rewards obtained through social media stimulate dopaminergic circuits in a similar way to feedback received in real life.
The result is a I digital which he acquires progressively emotional autonomybecoming an integral part of our real-life self-esteem system influencing how we perceive ourselves beyond social media. Representation, thus, is no longer just what we show, but what we begin to believe you are, also through i feedbacki like and the following we have on social media.
Dating apps and philosophy”onlife“
There app by dating represent one of the most evident contexts in which our digital identity born as edited version of ourselves.
Media psychology studies, such as those of Jeffrey Hancock And Catalina Tomashow that in dating profiles we tend to emphasize traits that we believe are positive between verisimilitude and desirability. We don’t lie, exactly, but we select. Our digital self then becomes a “filtered self”built from what we want the other to see.
Neuroscience suggests that this process is not just representational, but “modifying”: over time, the mind gets used to the idealized version of us themselves who inhabit those platforms, with a psychological return that can strengthen ours self-perception or make it fragile in the face of discrepancy with real life.
Precisely for these reasons and assumptions, the philosopher Luciano Floridi describes our era as “onlife“: a intertwining so close between digital and real that it becomes futile to distinguish them. What we do on dating apps, what we post on social media, what systems record of our daily behaviors, everything contributes to the construction of an extended identity which no longer resides only in us.
Research on digital behavior shows that we change the way we speak, dress, interact or make decisions based on the image we created online. There digital presence it seems, that in a certain sense, go before us: when we meet someone in person, their knowledge of us is already filtered by the profiles they have seen.
Digital identity is a legacy too post-mortem
An impressive feature ofdigital identity it’s that it doesn’t dissolve when we are no longer here. Platforms maintain photos, conversations, comments, stories and even algorithmic habits.
The anthropological studies of Jed Brubaker have defined these phenomena “digital afterlives“: residual lives that continue to interact with the living, evoking the presence of the deceased in new ways. THE’TO THE pushes the boundary even furtherbecause it can recreate the voice, writing style and even responses of a missing person.
Digital identity not only outperforms real life, but it can survive it by becoming an autonomous entity which continues to act in social memory. What we leave online is no longer archive: it is presence, a legacy.
Towards a new idea of identity
We’ve reached a point where the identity it can no longer be thought of as unitary or confined to the body. It is a distributed process, a continuous negotiation between what we are, what we show and what algorithms transform.
Dating apps are often the first contact with construction of a selected self; social media transforms that self into a narrative ecosystem; the platforms project it beyond biological time.
The central question is not whether digital identity surpasses real identity, it already partly does. Maybe the future of the person it will play precisely on the ability to recognize that we have become beings extended, hybridand learn to live with what our digital tracks they tell about us, even when they stop coinciding perfectly with our life.
Sources
Goffman E, (1956). “The presentation of self in everyday life”
Floridi L. (2015). “The onlife manifesto: being human in a hyperconnected era”
Brubaker JR, Hayes G, R., Dourish P. (2013). “Beyond the grave: facebook as a site for the expansion of death and mourning.”
Brubaker JR (2016). “Death, identity, and the digital remains.”
