Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall

 

In Amy L. Gonzales’ and Jeffery T. Hancock’s article “Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall:  Effects of Exposure to Facebook on Self-Esteem” (2008), the authors claim that Facebook has major effects on people’s self-esteem.  Depending on if you have positive or negative self-esteem, social media can effect your self-esteem, either positively or negatively.  This is a study that can be argued, agreed, and disagreed upon in many ways.  I agree that Facebook has a positive effect on both types of people, those with low and high self-esteem, because of one factor.  That one factor is selective self-presentation.

Selective self-presentation allows the author to select what information is shared on Facebook.  Some people do not give an accurate account of their personal information that is shared on Facebook, while others do.  In most cases, we only portray the positive things that are going on in our lives to only show how ‘good’ things are going in our lives.  Some people also only share what they think that others will view as positive information.

The studies that were completed showed that the effects on self-esteem were negative were inconclusive, while it showed that the effects of self-esteem were positive.   It was concluded that Facebook has a positive effect because of their ability to selectively self-present themselves.  Of course, most people that can control that variable will only allow certain posts, pictures and information to be shown to thousands and sometimes millions of viewers of their profile.

Facebook is not the only social media that we see people using selective self-presentation, but we do know that in the past few years, it has been used in every capacity possible.  While it is supposed to be a connection of friends and networking with others, it has evolved into many other things.  All things posted can be used for the positive and negative effects on society, but for those simple users like me, that only want to show my distant friends and families what I'm doing, it normally boosts my self-esteem when they make nice comments or "LIKE" my pictures and posts. 

We are all guilty of using selective self-presentation.  We use this as our defense mechanism from the world and to ensure that we are judged positively as much as possible.