Blog #1

At this moment, millions of teenagers and adults are logging onto Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. They are posting and writing their thoughts and ideas. But are they providing too much information? Each of these teenagers and adults have created a profile of themselves. These profiles represent of how they view themselves, it's their reflexive identities. But how true are these identities?

An online identity is someone who creates an identity on one of this internet sites, plus many others, that includes both their reflexive and ascribed identities. Sometimes these people exaggerate on these identities and create a whole new identity for themselves, so they can fit in. An identity of who they wish they were.

So many people, lose themselves and their true identities on these online sites. It’s where they disconnect themselves from the real world and completely give themselves to the online social media world. The question is, are they providing to much information to this social media world and are they showing risky behavior?

According to Fox News, they are showing to much and their behvaior is risky. “Young people do not consider the consequences of posting their drinking habits and sexual behavior.” The young people feel like it is the "cool thing to do," to show that they are drinking or showing a little skin. They feel like they can hide on the internet and meet up with other like people. But the internet is a very public place were there is the chance of a million viewers. The fact is that people want to change their online identities to fit in and feel like they belong. They want to show themselves as the party person, who likes “to have sex, drink and be violent.” These people try to portray an image that they think will fit in with the rest of the world.

Doctor Meg, from Fox News has stated, “the ones to me that were most surprising and most worrisome were the sexual references.” Sometimes we feel uncomfortable about expressing our true selves to the real world and it is easier to express ourselves on the internet. We join in with other people like us and create this online identity that no one knows of. But how safe are our online identities when we post these new profiles?

To answer all the questions above, yes, these people are sharing to much information and not showing their true identities. They are creating an identity that best describes who they want to be. These identities can be completely made up and false. They do not think that it is effecting them, but consequently it is. All these young teens are showing risky behavior for attention. But in the end, it is only hurting them. We are not safe by posting these new identities. There are many serious matters that can come out of these online identities. It is always important to be as private and secure about yourself, because there are some serious problems that you can face.