Waking up every morning, getting sober from our sleep and heading straight to the bathroom to wash our face and regroup our thoughts, then we brush our teeth and probably take a shower and soon get dressed and be ready to live our life in a brand-new day. Whether we go to work, to school, to a vacation, and maybe just stay at home; no matter what we do, we make this decision as our own. We define ourselves in the real world through our actions in it, just as in the digital world.
Considering the internet or rather the social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as an extension to portray ourselves, we can dare say that our digital self is also our real selves. We just made the internet the medium to address ourselves in a digital world.
In the physical plane, we can determine a person’s uniqueness through genes, like the nucleotides that builds up our DNA. We can think of these nucleotides as codes that determines a person’s unique physical trait. Just as in the digital world, it also contains codes, but the difference is, rather than nucleotides it would be the bits and bytes, or the one’s and zero’s in which a computer can portray based on the input we made.
One cannot fully determine someone’s identity just through genetic codes or through the internet. If so then what else can mold a person’s uniqueness?
Environment. Imagine someone who had a “not so good” childhood, abused and rarely received any affection and from someone who is spoiled and received a lot of things since childhood. With this in mind, we can partially hypothesize that a person’s environment can mold someone basing on their environment, the kid who had it rough can turn into a madman or be a kind person who do not want his past to define himself, and the spoiled kid can turn into a self-centered guy or a generous one. Either way the notion of the self is also molded through the road that is laid out and which way should we walk upon.
Of course, a person’s whole identity molded through genes and environment is impossible to be replicated in the digital world, rather we have the liberty to make the inputs through our own decisions.
There is a difference between the digital self or the “online you” to the real world but in this modern era, we can ultimately say that our online presence can greatly influence our real characteristics, it is like breaking and building new foundations of our traits. One can gain confidence, trust, develop relationships, and make friends through the online world. That improvement or that development of our character can help our minds blur out the line between the real world from the digital world.
Ultimately, the digital world or the digital versions of our selves is but an extension of an environment that is new in which we can develop a fresh start. ###