Internet and Identity: How a generation who grew up with the Internet established identity

Nicholas Young
Instructor: Kathy Charmaz
Sonoma State University
Sociology 418
May 11th, 2009, 10:00 AM

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 Internet and Identity: How a generation who grew up with the Internet established identity

How does the Internet affect identity? This research proposes that because the Internet is a new

force of society that it will have an effect on identity just as much as any other aspect of society. The

interview subjects for this research are part of a generation that used the Internet from early on and tell

about their use, their identity, and whether they think these two relate in any way. From influencing

attributes to enhancing already existing personality aspects, the Internet is a powerful social tool that

lacks sociological research. Using the guiding theories of Cooley's looking-glass self and the concept

of face-work by Goffman, this research explores the concept of identity from a symbolic interactionist

perspective.

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 The Internet is a quickly growing section of society that is beginning to insert itself into many

peoples' lives in varying degrees. The Internet has been especially prevalent in the lives of young

adults who are now between the ages of 18 and 26 years old, as they grew up in a decade where the

Internet made exponential growth from a basic communications device to a whole new form of social

media. This research wishes to explore how this generation of individuals have developed their

identity and self-concept in an environment that included the Internet. Past research on the subject of

the Internet has been limited to quantitative studies on use and qualitative studies focusing on

anonymous identity. This research wishes to expand this into the integration between online activity

and the offline identity. How the two worlds of Internet and the real world interact to influence or not

influence the creation of either identity.

The definition of identity that this research uses is a pretty broad one. Identity can be any part

of the self that the individual wishes to show as his or her identity. Identity could be anything from

what type of personality the individual has, what his or her interests are or what his or her current life

position happens to be at the moment. The subjects in this research tended towards personality

attributes when asked to explain their identity. The idea of an online identity is the same as the offline

identity except for where it is being projected. The online identity will consist of personality traits, life

positions, or interests but they can sometimes be varied from what makes up an offline identity.

When faced with choosing a topic to research, I took the concept of starting where you are from

Lofland et al.'s qualitative analysis guide to develop from where my interests laid. The Internet has

always been a large part of my life, like the people I interviewed, I was exposed to it at an early age and

quickly became highly involved with the activities available there. I chatted with strangers, played

online games, posted on forums and downloaded music. The majority of my middle school and high

school experience was spent mostly online with school creating breaks in online activity. This is where

I saw my own identity shift, because of this activity. I wanted to see how others in my position dealt

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with this exposure, if their own identity was affected, if they saw change, or if my case was unique. I

was pushed by the lack of research in the area. The Internet is huge now, yet the sociological field

seems slow to catch onto it as a valid research spot, especially for qualitative research. It is my hope

this will change soon and my goal with this research to show how important it is that we look at the

Internet much more closely and in a qualitative sociological manner.

Literature Review

While the Internet itself has been around for quite some time, the qualitative research that has

been done on in it in relation to individual's identity has been severely limited, especially on the

Internet's current role has a social media form. The bulk of research done on the Internet has been

quantitative research that either uses the Internet as a survey tool, or looks to compare certain aspects of

Internet usage to a user's beliefs and morals. The anonymity of the Internet is a large research topic

that has been explored in both quantitative and qualitative research and that is why it played a part in

this research as well. The existing qualitative, sociological research on the Internet, especially in

relation to the aspect of identity, has been done on the creation of an Internet identity that is separate

from the individual's offline identity. This is with due cause, as that is a major aspect of the Internet

and something that will come up almost instantly when one mentions the Internet and identity in the

same thought.

The Internet is seen as an escape from the real world by many people. It is a place where

individuals can be more free in their social interactions and could “say pretty much what [they] want

without others pinning what [they] say to [their] real name” (Myers 1987: 256). In the anonymous

world of a BBS, a precursor to the modern Internet message board, or Cybertown, an online

community with a virtual city-feel, people are free to act as what they see are their real selves, or

different selves that are only loosely connected to the real world. In Denise Carter's (2004) study of

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Cybertown, a more permanent version of an online community that was set up look like a virtual city

with neighborhoods, houses, and stores, she found that individuals were able to form friendships more

easily in this Internet environment. These residents of Cybertown saw the relationships they made

there just as real as those made offline, and in some cases saw those relationships as stronger and more

important than offline relationships. The online relationships, to them, were based on inner selves and

personalities and were free of judgment based on personal appearance or socioeconomic status. Even

the researcher, immersing herself in the online world for observation, found herself making friends

online that could easily translate to an offline relationship, which came up in the current research topic

as well. The Internet is a powerful social device that is only growing stronger as the technology

increases. The online world is becoming increasingly integrated with the offline world, and online

relationships can easily permeate and transcend these cyber barriers to become real world friendships

and relationships. The Internet identity will become free to become a real life identity as well.

In the beginning stages of the Internet communication services such as a BBS, email, instant

messaging and even places like Cybertown, were separate from the more static web pages and web

sites. These two different aspects of Internet expression allowed similar outlets for individuals to

express an identity, whether it be an Internet-created identity or a real life identity. Now the two

aspects have begun to merge into social networking websites such as Facebook and Myspace, where

individuals create web pages that express their identity as well as being able to communicate with other

individuals easily. Katherine Walker (2000) studied the secondary aspect of Internet identity

expression, personal web pages. With a web page an author is able to display a variety of different

information. Web pages could vary from being personal information hubs for the authors to providing

information on a subject. No matter the goal of the web page, the majority of web page owners in

Walker's study chose to dedicate some of their page to themselves, either in the form of an introductory

paragraph, a profile-type listing of demographics and interests, or entire pages dedicated to telling their

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own personal story.

On the pages where the individual is not the focus, the individual will still take the space to

introduce themselves, at least in the context of why they have created the page, why they are qualified

to make the page, and so forth. While not explicitly about the individual, Walker still argues these

pages show the identity of the author, as much as a page that has been dedicated to the author

completely. Walker divided the websites of the study into two categories, intrinsic pages that would

only exist online and show the most identity of the author and extrinsic pages that could easily be

replaced by something offline and show less identity of the author. The owners of the extrinsic pages

differed in their opinions of whether their pages showed identity or not; some admitting that there was

identity while others denied any identity that they may convey and if it did, it wasn't what they aimed

to do. Because these pages are essentially anonymous, like Cybertown of Carter's study and the BBS

of Myers' study, the authors of the pages were able to create identities that were complete fiction and

unrelated to their real world identity. These authors had a clearly separate online and offline identity,

while those who didn't fabricate an identity did not have as much separation between the two.

The Internet, because of its size, provides an immense area for various communities to establish

themselves in a much more concrete way then was possible before the advent of the Internet. Two sets

of communities that are very much effected by these are subcultures and individuals participating in a

deviant activity. The Internet gives these groups a place to congregate without the barriers of space and

the societal norms that may discourage their activity. With subcultural identity the anonymity on the

Internet becomes a barrier. Where individuals can use the Internet's anonymous world to freely adopt a

new identity that isn't their own, when entering an online subculture world, individuals who are

anonymous are questioned on their authenticity (Williams & Copes 2005). Users on a Straightedge

message board, a web forum based on the punk subculture that embraces a drug-free lifestyle and

opposes consumerism and self-indulgence, had to prove their authenticity to other users to gain access.

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A significant part of belonging to a subculture is embracing the authentic looks, mannerisms, and

behaviors of that subculture in order to be accepted, but on the Internet the visual aspect is removed

and users are faced with proving themselves through text. The trouble also lies in that individuals seek

out the online community because no such community exists in the real world for them, and therefore

are without the authenticity experience that is needed. Related to the authenticity concerns is the

common topic of the straightedge forum, questioning if a certain lifestyle choice is allowed while a

member of the subculture. The online world gives the users open forum to question this, pushing the

boundaries of authenticity enough so that they can squeeze through with their own idea of the

straightedge identity and still be a part of the community.

In common knowledge, the Internet and its anonymity are seen as places where deviant

behavior can thrive because there is an assumed lack of consequences for deviant actions in this

environment. Self-injurers are a deviant group that is able to become a community on the Internet

when it was otherwise confined to private practice and loner activity (Adler and Adler 2008). The

practice of self-injury, the“deliberate non-suicidal destruction of one's own body tissue” (p. 34) is seen

as highly deviant and those who participate in it are without a community in the real world. Because it

is often hidden from sight and the practitioners are unable to identify other self-injurers. However, on

the Internet they are able to freely seek out others who have the same identity as them, forming a

community of individuals that society deems as deviant.

The Internet offers anonymous interaction, communities for those who lack one in the real

world, and a way to express identities that are impossible to express in the real world. While online,

individuals can only reveal a few choice traits or be completely different people, allowing them to

develop a new identity that can have an effect on their real world identity. The past research on the

Internet is starting point towards a better understanding of the sociological significance of it and how it

interacts with identity and self-concept. More research is necessary in this field and that is the goal of

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this research, to make more headway into the field of Internet and identity in a qualitative and

sociological sense.

Theoretical Framework

The analysis of this research has been guided by a symbolic interactionist perspective on the

idea of the Internet and its relation to identity with influences from the works of Erving Goffman on

face-work and interaction rituals and Charles Horton Cooley on the looking-glass self. The symbolic

interactionist perspective assumes that society is created through social interaction, that interaction

informs our meanings of what we know, our situations, and who we are to become. The Internet is a

new form of interaction, rising in the past decade as the dominant form of socialization for many

individuals, the bulk of which are now between the ages of 18 and 26 and were the subjects of this

research. Because the Internet has become a place of social interaction, the symbolic interactionist

perspective fits as a backbone for explaining how it affects the formation of an identity, both online and

in the real world. The Internet provides a share shared culture, intensified by the diversity of the

individuals that use it, from which socialization can develop in a new and different way. Symbolic

interaction dictates that the Internet is therefore an important factor in the development of identity.

Goffman (1967, 2004) states that all individuals take part in what he calls face-work during

interactions, which is specific interaction rituals that are meant to keep a certain portrayal of his or her

self visible to those with whom he or she is interacting. An individual strives to save or maintain face

in interactions that are especially damaging to the presentation of the self that individual is wishing to

keep. When face is damaged, Goffman explains, individuals must take part in certain rituals to repair

the damage. A specific example of this is the apology ritual. When one individual performs an action

that may have offended another individual or damaged his or her self, the acting individual is faced

with having to correct the problem, in order to save face. By apologizing for the wrong, the individual

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saves his or her face as well as allows the other individual's face to be saved from the harm of the

offending action. By refusing to apologize, as some individuals do, they fail to save their own face, but

give the offended individual the ability to save his or her face by denying to take the lack of apology

negatively and can choose to take another action. In every interaction an individual makes, he or she is

trying to save his or her face from damage and when it is damaged, he or she must take actions to

correct it. On the Internet the idea of face-work is challenged. The anonymous nature of it allows one

to ignore trying to keep face, because the face he or she has while anonymous is not connected back to

his or her real world identity, and therefore maintaining that face is an irrelevant point. However, if the

identity is consistent while online, then there is an online face that matters to the individual, allowing

them to again take part in Goffman's face-work interaction rituals in a similar manner to offline face-

work.

Cooley's (1983, 2004) looking-glass self comes from the inability of one to recognize his or her

self in full view and that he or she must rely on his or her imagined view of his or her self for reference.

This view comes from other individuals, imagining how they might view him or her and making

imagined interpretations from this view. Cooley states that we do this in three steps: we imagine how

we appear to others, interpret that view from our own imagined viewpoint, and form an imagined

response to this judgment from the reflection. The looking-glass self comes into play with Internet

interactions by the reflections one gets from those interactions are based even more on imagined

reactions formed by the individual, as there are limited cues from which to draw conclusions from, due

to the lack of face-to-face interactions and the anonymity of the Internet. The other aspect of

anonymity on the Internet that benefits from this theory is that an individual has much more control

over his or her self-presentation, which gives him or her greater control over the reactions of others, or

how he or she views the reactions of others through the looking-glass. Internet communication is done

mostly in a text format, which can be read in many different ways, much more than speech or body

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language, leading to a much more open interpretation that can be manipulated in the favor of the

individual.

Both the theories of Goffman and Cooley are symbolic interactionist theories and therefore the

symbolic interactionist perspective has been the most used perspective throughout this research.

Symbolic interaction tells us that society comes first, and the Internet is a new facet of society that

deserves to be shown as having an influence on individual socialization, if only a minor influence for

some. The Internet is a new part of society, but the older theories of Goffman's face-work and

interaction rituals and Cooley's looking-glass self are just as relevant because the Internet, as new as it

is, is still a social structure where humans interact with each other. The interaction is just different,

requiring a new explanation of interaction practices, via these theories and the symbolic interactionist

perspective.

Methods

This research was done in a qualitative method, utilizing in-depth interviews. The sample

consisted of four Sonoma State University students all of whom lived on campus on the substance free

floor of a transfer student dorm. The sample consisted of two males, both aged 23 and two females,

aged 20 and 24. The sample was gathered conveniently from my immediate surroundings with

interviewee subjects suggesting others for the interview as well.

All interviews were recorded with the consent of the participant. These recordings were then

transcribed for analysis and combined with the notes taken during the interview on interviewee

reactions and body language cues.

Because the interview dealt with personal identity and self-concept, there were concerns

regarding privacy and personal feelings. All interviewees were given a choice of interview setting

where they would be most comfortable, which was in all cases the living rooms of their dormitory

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suites. The interviewees were also given the option to not answer any question if they chose to,

because of the sensitive matter of the subject. Internet usage can also been seen as a private thing, as it

is viewed as a solitary and private moment for most individuals. No interviewee was asked to give any

specific sites they visited, only general types and they were free to leave out any they weren't

comfortable sharing. All interviewees who mentioned a specific website did it willingly during the

interview. No interviewee stopped the interview before all questions were asked and no questions were

refused answer.

The methodological approach of in-depth interviewing is a strong approach to gaining

information about an individuals identity and self-concept. A survey could get at Internet use easily,

but would not be able to ask in-depth questions regarding identity that were required for this study. In

this aspect, the study utilized its strongest approach available. Any limitations to the approach came

from researcher error and lack of experience in interviewing. Time was also a limitation, as some

interviewees felt pressure to complete the interview in a certain time frame, but this did not seem to

limit the answers that were given, but could have, had the time strain been stronger or the interviews

placed in an inconvenient time for the interviewee or researcher.

Categories of Internet Use

From the four interviews conducted, four categories of Internet use became apparent: passive

use, social use, creative use, and entertainment use. Each of the four categories was present in all the

interviews to an extent, though creative was less common than all of the other categories.

Passive Internet use consists of the most common use of the Internet: surfing the web, reading

different web sites, gaining information and knowledge, and doing research for school. This type of

use came up the most often in the interviews and it can be shown that this is what most individuals

think the Internet is for and have thought it was for for the longest period of time. While this remains

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common, social use is becoming more common, especially among the individuals interviewed.

Social use consists of using the Internet to interact with other people, such as chatrooms, instant

messaging, forums and social networking. While social use has existed since the early years of the

Internet, such as the BBS in the Myers study, this type of use is growing in numbers. Three of the four

interviewees mentioned having a Facebook profile, a popular social networking site among college

students. The site allows users to create a profile, public or private, and add other individuals as

“friends” with whom they can then communicate via the website. This type of social use allows

individuals to keep in touch with people from their pasts or to make plans with current friends.

Entertainment use is similar to passive use, but rather than seeking out knowledge, the

individual seeks out some form of entertainment. This can come from downloading music, movies, or

television shows to watch on their computers or playing computer games that can be single or multi-

player. All interviewees participated in some form of entertainment use of the Internet, but only one,

Dave, a 24 year old male, explicitly mentioned computer gaming was part of their current Internet

usage, the others participated more in the consuming of more passive forms of entertainment such as

music and movies.

The final category of Internet use is creative use. This is the least common form of Internet use

among these interviewee subjects, possibly because it requires the person to be creative before using

the Internet. One interviewee, Allison a 20 year old female, mentioned her creative use quite

extensively throughout the interview, as she used the website YouTube, a place where users can freely

post their own videos, to post videos of herself singing. The creative use, like the social use, has been

part of the Internet since the early years, but has grown as different websites that encouraged creative

works began to evolve on the Internet, some alongside the social networking websites. This

intertwines social and creative use of the Internet, making a distinction hard for interviewees like

Allison. These four categories of Internet use are in no way an exhaustive list of how individuals use

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the Internet, but a concise way of organizing how these individuals make use of the Internet.

Keeping in Touch

All the interview subjects were currently attending college and living on campus, away from

parents, former friends, and family. The Internet has given them a way to remain in touch with the

people they left behind, with ease and quickness. The three interview subjects who had Facebook

profiles all mentioned using the website to keep in touch with old friends from before college. Clark, a

23 year old male, mentioned that because of Facebook he was able to “keep up with people [he]

ordinarily would kind of just either forget or not bother staying in contact with.” The Internet is, in its

basic definition, a connection tool meant to connect many computers over a large area of space. This

connection has also connected people easily, with little more effort than clicking a “send message” or

“request to be friends” button on a website, a step away from the past of collecting phone numbers and

waiting until reunions to see old friends. Clark's statement shows that without the Internet, he would

not make the effort to make contact with these people to keep in touch with them. He is almost

unwillingly to participate in the keeping in touch aspect of the Internet, but does so because it is there.

Allison has a more positive outlook of keeping in touch, mentioning how much Facebook has

contributed to her being able to make plans over breaks from school and getting closer to people who

she was only “kind of friends with at [her] junior college.” Whether viewed as positive or negative, the

keeping in touch aspect of social Internet use allows individuals to keep a larger social networking,

giving them a larger range of people from which to reflect on their identity.

Receiving Feedback

Feedback is an important aspect of developing self-concept because it plays right into Cooley's

looking-glass self. Because we rely on others interpretations of ourselves for our own definition of

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identity, receiving feedback is a direct way of getting that interpretation without the imagined

viewpoint. Feedback is an important part of Internet use as well, while it plays the most part in creative

use, it can also play a part in other Internet use as well. When placing creative works on the Internet,

the two interview subjects who did this most often, previously mentioned Allison as well as Betty, 24

years old, mentioned the feedback they got on the work being an important aspect of placing the work

online. Betty, who writes fan fiction, stories written by fans of a television, comic book, cartoon, etc,

mentioned her interest in writing before getting involved in the online fan fiction community and while

writing for the community she has gathered what she calls a fan base of those who enjoy her stories.

Online feedback on creative efforts increases confidence in that creative effort and the person's self.

Allison states in relation to the feedback she receives online:

“I can get compliments [to] make myself feel good about myself, which you know that's not
really fair. But other people's compliments make me feel good about myself, but they do. And
if, I'm not really looking to be a professional musician, but people keep being like 'oh let me
help you, let me help you with recordings, let me help you with this.'”

The feedback she receives acts as confidence boost on her creative works, which can translate to an

overall boost in her sense of self. Feedback plays a part in identity outside of feedback on creative

works. There is feedback on attributes of identity, especially when the individual is looking to change

an aspect of their identity, they can use the feedback of others to gauge if the change is successful. This

comes into play on the Internet especially with anonymous identities, where the person is trying out a

different identity then his or her real world identity, and the feedback he or she receives is vital to

keeping that anonymous identity believable.

Anonymity and the Internet

The idea of anonymous use of the Internet is the biggest concern of past sociological research

on the Internet. Anonymity can be described as having a person's real world identity shielded from

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other individuals, while online this means withholding information such as name, age, sex, and even

personality traits in order to keep his or her real identity a secret. People are allowed to be completely

anonymous while they are online, allowing them take on new identities with no bearing on the past and

do activities while anonymous that will rarely follow them back to the real world. The anonymity of

the Internet is possible because the user decides how much identifying information they wish to put out

there. In most passive use, individuals can easily remain completely anonymous, just a number on the

visitor statistics, while in social use, less anonymity if possible. But with lessened true anonymity,

individuals can substitute false information in place of real information in order to stay confidential

and, in the words of Clark be “security conscious, especially when you have all these crap people

around who try to steal information and do bad stuff.” Bad stuff could be anything from criminal

identity theft to stalking behavior to cases of sexual abuse and murder via Internet contacts. This is

why anonymity is a large issue within online use. But despite the safety of anonymity, it is still viewed

as a negative aspect of the Internet. Dave mentions that anonymity allows users to “make an ass of

themselves” because there is little or no repercussions for negative behavior when someone is

anonymous online. Anonymous individuals online do not have to worry about Goffman's theory of

face-work, because they have no face to save if their anonymous identity is temporary and only an

identity used to perform negative actions.

The anonymity online creates fictional people, words that Allison used to describe herself as

viewed by those who enjoyed her YouTube videos. She remarks on how some individuals can form

bonds with those they watch and read online, thinking they are getting to know the person, or what that

person decides to put out in the public. While her example is extreme as it relies on the individual

viewing her videos to become obsessed with her, it illustrates how anonymity can create a false self, a

fictional self, that is able to do what it pleases without consequence to the real world. This is why the

idea of online identity versus offline identity is important. The anonymous identity creates a strictly

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online identity, separate from the offline, while an online identity can still be established without

anonymity, it is not likely to be as separate.

Describing Identities

When asked to describe their identities, all interview subjects were easily able to name off

various different personality features: kind, shy, funny, competitive, etc. After getting these attributes

the interviewees were asked to think about where they came from, listing various real world sources

such as family and friends. Clark's answer played right into Cooley's looking-glass self, remarking that

his identity attributes came from other people telling him about them and he then knowing that they

were true. He remarked that “it's easier to recognize something that you don't come up [with]

yourself,” placing control over his identity on external forces rather than internal drive. However none

of the participants really felt strongly that the Internet has had an effect on their identity outside of the

Internet. Dave even blatantly came out and said that the Internet didn't affect his identity when asked

about the sources of the attributes he had listed. It became clear at this point of the interviews that the

Internet had not played a part in identity construction for these people. However, the Internet did serve

as a reinforcing factor on identity. Much similar to the concept of feedback, the Internet provided the

individuals a place to express their identities freely and allowed certain attributes to be strengthened.

This especially came into play with their online identities.

The idea of an online identity is very broad. It could mean anything from the anonymous

identity an individual uses to post insulting remarks online to the complete transferring of the offline

identity into a Facebook profile. The idea varied among participants. Clark preferred to use a different

identity that increased attributes of his identity that he favored. Allison saw her online identity as just

an extension of her offline identity. Dave remarked on that he was just himself online and because of

his use of voice chat while online it was hard to hide his true identity. Betty was not social online and

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did not feel she even had an online identity, aside from characters created for fan fiction that were

based on herself. Online identity was very much connected to offline identity in that it was a reflection

of the individual's personality traits, even if he or she tried to take on a new identity for specific

purposes.

Effect of Internet on Identity

The consensus among interviewees was that the Internet has played a small part in the

formation of their identities, but much less so than the influences of family, friends, and environment.

The Internet serves as an enhancement and embellishing tool on identity, people will take their

identities to the Internet, have freedom to display what they want to display and receive feedback on

that display. The feedback that is received helps enhance and increase the intensity of certain

attributes. Dave, for example, plays online games because he is highly competitive in all things, both

online and offline. Online gaming gave him a chance to be more competitive and in a wider range.

This attribute of his personality has been enhanced because of this habit, but the Internet has not

shaped, in his mind, any of his other personality attributes. Allison saw her videos on YouTube getting

comments and compliments, and saw some videos gain popularity outside the country. This didn't

change her identity to that of trying to be more a singer or performer for the Internet. It increased her

creative aspects, it influenced her to buy a ukulele in an effort to funnier, a personality attribute she

already said she had. The Internet acts as a charge station for identity, it doesn't change it, but only

increases what is already there. The amount of charge depends on the amount of connectedness that

individual has to the Internet. The individuals in these interviews all showed a relatively low

connection to the Internet. It was a way to kill time, keep in contact with friends, and entertain

themselves. For those who played on Cybertown in Denise Carter's study, they were more connected to

the Internet. The individuals there would probably show more influence on identity from the Internet

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than the charging behavior of the interviewees here. The more a person becomes connected to the

Internet, the more time they have to spend peering into the looking-glass it provides. If the individual

is participating in an interactive chat program such as Cybertown, he or she is going to have more

opportunities to imagine the reaction to his or her self. This gives the Internet more influence over the

self. The individuals in my interviews didn't show this connection to the Internet, so they didn't have

the chance to get as much reflection from the interaction there.

The Future of the Internet

This group of interview individuals first experienced the Internet in elementary and middle

school and grew up with it as it grew exponentially from 56k dialup modems to the high speed DSL

and cable Internet today. The growth is the reason for exploring this group has being possibly affected

by the Internet. But as it turns out, this group was not affected in a great deal. However, the

generations to come have been exposed to the Internet since early childhood and this longer and earlier

exposure will most likely have some effect on them. While the view of the Internet was generally

positive by my interview subjects, they all expressed some concern about the amount of exposure

future generations would get to the Internet. They did not want to see younger generations spending

very much time online, wanting instead for them to spend time outside and doing other hands-on

activities. They did not want to see the next generations identities being shaped by the Internet at all

and that these children should not be exposed to the Internet as early as they were. There is a negative

stigma attached to the Internet and its effects on identity, it is viewed as something that can destroy

social skills, making people unable to interact in the real world, and a time sink. Violent video games

are easily accessible, something Betty fears is the most dangerous to young children or that they can

cause the children to be aggressive which Allison witnessed in a popular YouTube video depicting a

young child yelling at his mother while playing Halo. The Internet may or may not have an effect on

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future generations, but those who grew up with it before would prefer it didn't, not even as little as it

had an effect on them.

Conclusion

The Internet and identity is a wide range of study. It is difficult to focus on when there is so

many tinier aspects that need to be looked at in order to understand the whole picture. Definitions of

identity vary so much, Internet use is non-standard, and there is little theoretical backing to deal

directly with this new technology. It can be said from this research that the Internet does play a small

part in identity, as much as any other aspect of society and culture. It creates a shared culture on which

the collective identity is based. It acts as looking-glass that individuals can see their identities reflected

back at them. It consists of face-work without the face-to-face interaction, even when that interaction

is anonymous. But for these specific individuals, the Internet did not play a direct, large factor on their

identity. It did not dramatically change anything about their selves. However, it did enhance what was

already there. It was a charge station from which aspects of identity could be charged, focused, and

honed but not changed.

Future generations may hold the key to exploring how identity is to be affected by the Internet,

though the current generation wishes this was not the case. The Internet is a positive and negative

force, just like anything in society. It can influence a negative identity of bad social skills but can

increase a positive identity of a widened world view and acceptance of others cultures. As stated by

Clark when speaking of his involvement in the Internet, “it's kind of interwoven like [a] web into my

life, so it's really hard not to rely on,” the Internet integrates very well with some individuals and this

integration will lead to change in identity for those who allow it, and for those who don't it will

continue to act as a charge station as it does for Allison, Betty, Clark, and Dave.

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 References

Adler, Patricia A. and Peter Adler. 2008. “The Cyber Worlds of Self-Injurers: Deviant Communities,

Relationships and Selves.” Symbolic Interaction. 31: 33.

Carter, Denise M. 2004. “Living in Virtual communities: Making friends online.” Journal of Urban

Technology. 11: 109.

Cooley, Charles Horton. 2004. “The Self as Sentiment and Reflection.” Pp. 24-29 in Inside Social

Life: Readings in Sociological Psychology and Microsociology, edited by Spencer E.

Cahill. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury Publishing Company

Goffman, Erving. 2004. “Face-Work and Interaction Rituals.” Pp. 156-166 in Inside Social Life:

Readings in Sociological Psychology and Microsociology, edited by Spencer E. Cahill. Los

Angeles, CA: Roxbury Publishing Company

Lofland, John, David Snow, Leon Anderson, and Lyn H. Lofland. 2006. Analyzing Social Settings: A

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Myers, David. 1987. “'Anonymity is Part of the Magic': Individual Manipulation of Computer-

Mediated Communication Contexts.” Qualitative Sociology. 10: 241.

Walker, Katherine. 2000. “'It's Difficult to Hide It': The Presentation of Self on Internet Home Pages.”

Qualitative Sociology. 23: 99.

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Williams, J. Patrick and Heith Copes. 2005. “'How Edge Are You?' Constructing Authentic

Identities and Subcultural Boundaries in a Straightedge Internet Forum.” Symbolic

Interaction. 28: 67.

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