Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Media and the Development of Identity

Media

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Media and the Development of Identity

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Media and the Development
of Identity
ADRIANA M. MANAGO

Abstract
The shift from “media” to “social media” in the digital age has implications for processes of identity formation during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. First,
the Internet provides young people with opportunities to co-construct entertainment
and social environments tailored to their own needs and interests. Second, adolescents’ presentations of self take place on the same screens and in the same activity
settings in which they access commercial media programming. These changes reflect
increasing cultural emphasis on personal agency and self-expression which brings
to bear new tasks for identity development during the transition to adulthood that
involve both opportunities and challenges for creating a coherent, stable, and meaningful sense of self. In terms of opportunities, social media give youth enhanced
control over presentations of self in social interactions and increased access to social
information and large networks of others to solicit feedback and reify self-concepts.
However, social media also bring new demands to negotiate heightened pressure
to perform a socially desirable self in a commercial environment that bestows value
on attractive images and popularity. Suggestions for future research include methods
that bridge youths’ offline and online social contexts and that balance enthusiasm for
the massive quantities of data that can be aggregated via data mining technologies
with qualitative work that examines the lived experiences of adolescents’ everyday
social practices.

MEDIA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDENTITY
Identity formation in a digital age increasingly involves constructing a self in
online spaces via the same screens where commercially produced media are
accessed. While time spent gathered around a television set is declining, personalized media consumption on laptops and mobile devices is surging. In
the United States, 95% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet and the websites
they gravitate to en masse are social networking sites, capturing 80% of adolescent Internet users (Lenhart, 2012). Young people use social networking
sites to craft public personas, articulate their network of social connections,
and consume and recycle media content from the World Wide Web. Social
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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networking sites represent new kinds of social media landscapes traversed
by young people coming of age in the millennial generation.
According to Erik Erikson’s psychosocial model, coming of age requires
constructing a coherent and stable identity that has meaning and value in
society. Identity is achieved through exploration and then commitment, a
process that is propelled by decreasing dependence on parents and increasing navigation of relationships in wider social spheres during adolescence
and the transition to adulthood. Using social networking sites, youth collect
massive webs of social connections, averaging in the hundreds, and sometimes reaching into the thousands. This trend, coupled with opportunities
to broadcast a polished self-image to those large audiences of friends, have
prompted concerns that youth are in peril of identity constructions that
prioritize superficiality over substance. More sanguine perspectives see
digital worlds offering youth valuable opportunities for self-elaboration.
Polarized research findings speak to trade-offs entailed in the implications
of social media for identity development.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
TRADITIONAL MEDIA
Youth are not passive pawns indoctrinated by media programming in their
identity development. Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Learning Theory
and related empirical work suggest that youth are agents in media socialization. They actively interpret the symbols populating their media diets and
learn behaviors that are appropriate, rewarded, and valued by seeking relevant and attractive media models. According to the Media Practice Model
(Steele & Brown, 1995) and Uses and Gratifications Theory (Rubin, 1994),
adolescents’ daily media preferences and practices reflect unique navigations
of their identity concerns and personal interests. They selectively embody,
reformulate, and appropriate entertainment media to express and affirm who
they are, their tastes, their values, and what they believe in and stand for.
Moreover, media converge with peer socialization. Youth culture draws from
mass media to collectively construct what is valuable and worthwhile; adolescents develop identities by adapting to these peer cultures through social
processes (Arnett, Larson, & Offer, 1995).
SOCIAL MEDIA
Personal agency in the form of self-expression among peers is pronounced
within social media environments such as chat rooms, blogs, and bulletin
boards (Subrahmanyam & Smahel, 2011). Anonymity and the disinhibiting
effects of computer-mediated communication afford youth with enhanced

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opportunities to explore common adolescent concerns with peers, issues
such as sexuality or dealing with parents. As adolescents project their own
thoughts and issues onto digital screens, they actively shape the discourses
in their media environments and learn interactively with a larger expanse of
teens outside their immediate social circles. Teenagers can use blogs to tell
their stories, clarify their sense of self, and assert their voices in the media
landscape. Youth are no longer just consumers, but also media producers,
co-constructing online media environments to make them more precisely
relevant to their personal needs and preferences than was possible with
traditional media use.
With the explosion of social networking sites in 2005, the most popular
online media environments became less anonymous. Social networking sites
such as Facebook provide youth with an efficient way to create a virtual
Rolodex of the people they encounter in their lives, preserve past relationships or fleeting connections, and expand their social spheres. Much of what
is done on these social media websites can be called social grooming: maintaining friendships, keeping track of what contacts in the network are doing
via their public posts, what they are talking about and who they are interacting with, staying abreast of social events and trends, and managing one’s
own reputation to the network (Tufekci, 2008). As the second most popular
website in the world next to Google, Facebook and its 618 million daily active
users have made producing and consuming gossip a definitive feature of the
multimedia entertainment package on the Internet.
PERSONAL IDENTITY
Research focusing on Facebook usage among college students and high
school adolescents in Western cultures has established that online and offline
identities are fluidly intertwined rather than dichotomous. Experimental
research indicates that young people project offline identities onto digital
screens, especially in the context of social networking sites where interactions
are anchored in offline relationships (Wilson, Gosling, & Graham, 2012).
Qualitative and mixed-methods studies also show that social networking
sites promote self-conscious crafting of manicured, hoped-for, or intended
selves (Zhao, Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008). However, public feedback on
self-presentations authorizes and validates identity claims in the absence
of physical stimuli in virtual spaces (Donath, 2008). These online identity
constructions in collaboration with peers impact adolescents’ self-esteem,
further demonstrating the way online and offline identities are interrelated
(Valkenburg & Peter, 2011).

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GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY
Gender and sexual identity development also cross online–offline divides.
The desire to reproduce the self as physically appealing to audiences of
friends on social networking sites is widespread, evidenced by photos
and other multimedia youth broadcast that often adopt commercial media
strategies for portraying socially desirable forms of femininity, masculinity,
and sex appeal (Manago, Graham, Greenfield & Salimkhan, 2008; Ringrose,
2010). Social networking sites afford young people with increased agency
in their physical self-expression; they can reflect on and edit how they
are portrayed as they select certain backgrounds, poses, camera angles, or
position themselves in relation to others. Social media can also empower
youth to socially construct with friends, meanings for gender and sexuality
that undermine dominant paradigms (Van Doorn, 2010). As they express
their sexuality online, adolescents’ bodies are increasingly projected as
digital phenomena to be consumed alongside other commercially produced
entertainment and advertising. One implication of this trend is that girls
who use Facebook frequently show signs of self-objectification, that is,
experiencing the body not for what it does or feels like but what it looks like
to others (Tiggemann & Miller, 2010).
SOCIAL IDENTITY
Within the domain of social identity, the concept of bridging social capital has
gained the most traction by demonstrating the utility of social networking
sites for garnering social resources. Bridging social capital is robustly associated with active Facebook use; it is defined as having functional connections
with instrumental resources and information from large social webs, and
thus identifying with broad and somewhat diverse communities (Ellison,
Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007). Convenient and efficient access to public posts
from the networked public seems to foster a sense of belonging and connectedness to expansive communities beyond everyday face-to-face social
groups. Participating in these sites can also cultivate identification with specific social categories, such as ethnic social groups. For example, Facebook
supports engagement in race-related discourses with a diversity of others,
thus providing ethnic minority adolescents with opportunities to elaborate
ethnic identities (Tynes, Garcia, Giang, & Coleman, 2010). Facebook also provides youth with tools to create a profile that builds their ethnic self-concept
(Grasmuck, Martin, & Zhao, 2009).

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CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Increased opportunities for personal agency and self-expression on social
media present polarizing questions for identity researchers. Do social media
provide access to social resources that promote identity exploration, elaboration, and clarification during adolescence and the transition to adulthood?
Alternatively, does the ability to broadcast the self to large audiences of
friends rob youth of a sense of privacy or intimacy in social relations and
promote hollow self-concepts and forms of self-worth based on concerns
about reputation and popularity? On the one hand, social networking
sites do allow youth to experiment with various aspects of themselves
online and gauge feedback from peers. Because online communications are
asynchronous, youth can control their presentations of self, reflect on who
they are and who they want to be, perhaps actualize idealized or potential
selves into a shared social reality. The more they circulate self-concepts
with others, the more likely those traits are integrated into a sense self. On
the other hand, communicating and presenting the self in a one-to-many
style, as if on stage to an audience of others, and strategically selecting
flattering photos or cleverly worded public comments could also encourage
self-involvement and a heightened concern with social approval.
There does seem to be a link between the proliferation of social media
and increasing self-involvement among youth in the millennial generation
(Twenge, 2013). The process of image management to large amorphous networked publics on social networking sites seems to encourage notions of the
self as a brand to be socially marketed (Marwick & boyd, 2011; Salimkhan,
Manago, & Greenfield, 2010). Moreover, popularity seeking is one of the
most important motivating forces of Facebook use among undergraduates
(Lee, Moore, Park, & Park, 2012; Utz, Tanis, & Vermeulen, 2012), suggesting
that sociality on Facebook is more self-focused rather than other-focused.
Furthermore, building a profile that filters negative information and highlights positive information about the self, and then traversing through the
network via this digital representation, likely promotes increased consideration of one’s self-image and a positively biased sense of self-awareness. In
fact, Facebook use is associated with enhanced self-views (Gentile, Twenge,
Freeman, & Campbell, 2012; Gonzales & Hancock, 2011; Kim & Lee, 2011).
Another perspective in the literature emphasizes that new norms for sociality and personhood in the digital age reflect shifting value priorities conducive to more elaborated identity constructions. Evidence suggests that it is
not narcissistic self-involvement, but openness to sharing information about

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oneself that predicts self-focused status updates and photo sharing on Facebook (McKinney, Kelly, & Duran, 2012). Personal self-expression is increasingly emphasized and valued in an age of social media where the production and distribution of entertainment is decentralized away from large commercial enterprises. In fact, the process of acculturating to Facebook entails
increasing public self-expression. Large-scale studies with college students
(Christofides, Muise, & Desmarais, 2009) and with the general population of
Facebook users (Burke, Marlow, & Lento, 2010) illustrate that individuals’
public self-disclosures on the site increase as more people in their networks
disclose.
In essence, millennial youth growing up with social media may increasingly prioritize the role of self-expression in social connectivity compared
to previous generations. Indeed, an intergenerational study of MySpace
showed that adolescents (13–19 years) compared to older users (over 60
years old) disclose more emotions in their self-descriptions and broadcast
those self-expressions to larger networks (Pfeil, Arjan, & Zaphiris, 2009).
Emotional self-disclosure is the most popular use of the status update feature
on Facebook, and college students perceive increased social support the
more friends they estimate observing those status updates (Manago, Taylor,
& Greenfield, 2012). In addition, larger audience size for status updates is
associated with more shallow social networks consisting of loose ties and
distant friendships such as fleeting acquaintances. Thus, the proliferation
of social media reflects sociocultural changes in practices, meanings, and
values for social connection that prioritize personal self-expression, asserting one’s voice in the media landscape and painting portraits of the self
to solidify one’s place within very large communities of close and distant
others.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Social media present both new opportunities and challenges for the process of identity development. One way to frame discussions surrounding
identity development and social media is to delineate the tasks involved
in forming a coherent, stable, and valued sense of self in a digital society
that affords increasing personal agency and self-expression, and convenient
access to large social networks. A focus on tasks moves researchers away
from conceptualizing studies in terms of either ominous or overly optimistic
questions about the impacts of communication technologies on human
development. Rather, it encourages examinations of the ways in which
social media are part of shifting social norms, meanings, and values that
give rise to new milestones adolescents must navigate as they form a mature
sense of self. Many of the identity development tasks that adolescents now

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face revolve around consolidating a sense of meaning and self-worth, given
extensive opportunities for identity exploration, and a heightened emphasis
on forming a digitally represented and socially desirable reputation in
networked publics.
EXPLORATION AND COMMITMENT
Much of the research on identity development has traditionally used James
Marcia’s Identity Status Model to examine the ways in which adolescents
move through a period of identity exploration to a state of commitment,
that is, dedication to an autonomously negotiated set of stable self structures
that is adaptive to one’s social world. Millennial youth possess enhanced
capabilities to engage in identity exploration via Internet highways through
diverse communities of ideas and information. Indeed, Mimi Ito et al. (2010)
have found that digital youth venture into potentially rich learning landscapes online, cultivating expertise in niche interests by using social media
to “geek-out” with other like-minded individuals.
However, the nearly unlimited possibilities online combined with a bombardment of stimulation and distractions plus new opportunities to engage
in anonymity in virtual spaces could also inhibit the process of consolidation
and commitment. Very little research has examined the role of social media in
the process of identity commitment, although early work suggests that the
utility of the Internet in identity consolidation depends on whether online
usage is balanced with identity work in offline relationships (Valkenburg &
Peter, 2008). A topic ripe for new research is how identity fragmentation versus self-concept unity could arise from social media use, depending on how
usage is balanced with offline interactions and depending on the personal
and social resources young people bring to the table.
SELF-VALIDATION
Another important component of identity development is forming an identity that is personally meaningful and also socially sanctioned. Interestingly,
social media paradoxically engender increased expression of unique selves
and also increased access to the opinions of others. Thus, millennial youth
face new tasks in coordinating heightened capacities for social validation and
autonomous expression as they process who they are during adolescence and
emerging adulthood. With access to information and feedback from multiple
and diverse social groups in their online networks, youth could be cultivating
sophisticated capabilities for sourcing multiple points of view to formulate
an independent sense of self. Alternatively, crafting a self in anticipation of
feedback from large networks of peers may also foster dependence on social

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validation and peer approval. In the context of social media, youth must reconcile the increasing salience and availability of others’ opinions with their
own internal locus of security, confidence, and stability.
SELF-WORTH
Because attention to the self is often a goal on social networking sites, these
online self-presentation contexts could foster fragile self-esteem by creating
pressure to construct a socially desirable identity that attracts attention and
publicity. A study examining associations between social networking sites
and college students’ sources of self-worth found that frequency of Facebook
use was associated with public-based contingencies of self-worth, that is,
self-satisfaction dependent on social approval and appearances (Stefanone,
Lackaff, & Rosen, 2011). Heightened awareness of the self as an image to be
evaluated and valued based on attractiveness could also explain previously
mentioned associations between Facebook use and self-objectification among
adolescent girls (Tiggemann & Miller, 2010). These studies are correlational,
meaning that it could be that youth who are attuned to social approval and
who are concerned with appearances are drawn to use Facebook in the first
place. However, it is also not hard to imagine that spending time broadcasting the self to large audiences could foster an orientation toward psychological absorption with self-image and popularity. These are sources of self-worth
that may be variable and fluctuating, leading to fragility in self-worth.
Using social networking sites to observe others, rather than to broadcast
the self, also has implications for self-worth. Although it may promote
bridging social capital, youth engaged in social information gathering
on Facebook are likely to be exposed to unrealistic standards from their
contacts because posted content tends to be manicured for public broadcasting. Upward social comparisons are elicited when young people browse
through information posted by friends in the newsfeed and unwittingly
conclude, based on a disproportionate amount of positive data from users’
promotional content, that others have better lives than they do (Chou &
Edge, 2012). Upward social comparison resulting from the consumption
of misleading media content may be detrimental to identity development,
discouraging youth as they reflect on their progress or achievements relative
to their counterparts on Facebook. By balancing out the consumption of rosy
pictures posted by acquaintances online, face-to-face relationships can help
youth gauge their standing in the world in more realistic ways.

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NEGOTIATING A PUBLIC PERSONA
Healthy adolescent identity development also involves learning to negotiate
and integrate multiple aspects of the self that exist in different social contexts,
for example, the self that exists with parents versus school teachers, friends
who are jocks versus friends who are computer geeks. Interestingly, the collection of diverse contacts in one locale in the online social network presents
the opposite problem, one that constrains multiple social identities. When
youth post status updates or upload photographs from their latest social
event, they are communicating to the entire network of known others who
likely have multiple beliefs, opinions, or hold various roles of authority in
their lives, a phenomenon known as context collapse (Marwick & boyd, 2011).
In addition, as preadolescents and adolescents begin to construct an online
identity profile, they must come to understand the repercussions of their
identity expressions being permanently indexed in digital storehouses and
potentially accessed by unknown others. The need to appropriately package the self as a public spectacle, and edit self-expressions for potentially
unknown future audiences, presents new challenges and also opportunities
for growth and maturity. Youth may desire to express their deepest thoughts,
their uniqueness and individuality, and must also yield to a certain amount
of conformity in their self-presentations so as not to offend differing social
groups, to attract multiple audiences to their posts, and to avoid potentially
incriminating information that could come back to haunt them at a later date.
How will youth come to understand themselves knowing that their digital
self-expressions will constitute permanent and perhaps publicly searchable
records of their identities? How will they negotiate a desire for attention from
an audience with a desire to be authentic and unique? How might the opportunity to create a personal brand for public consumption offer a new vehicle
for consolidating a sense of self and how might it flatten the complexity and
flexibility of self-constructions that are attuned to various social situations?
In general, the line between media commercialism and self-portrayals is
increasingly blurred in an age of social media. Identity development has long
involved negotiating meanings and values from pop culture and commercial entertainment, yet as youth face new image management demands on
the same screens where they access multimedia commercial stimuli, what is
at stake is a sense of authenticity and self-worth that transcends commercial values and one-dimensional marketing packages. Identity researchers in
the coming years will be challenged to understand how to help youth feel
empowered by social media to express who they are and cultivate their interests and expertise while avoiding attachment to a conditionally valued public
persona constructed around mass appeal.

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RESEARCH METHODS AND PARADIGMS
On the research horizon are bridges across methodological and disciplinary
paradigms. Future research will require developmental psychologists to
understand broad societal-level trends articulated by sociologists and
communication researchers that are impacting young people’s social
development. Social structures penetrate and shape interpersonal relationships that constitute cultural environments and thus shape intrapersonal
dynamics, including emotional and cognitive processing during identity
development. Moreover, interdisciplinary approaches are well-suited to
take advantage of the increasing viability of tracking enormous amounts
of data from traces of human behavior projected onto digital screens. “Big
data” promises to transform behavioral research by allowing researchers
to visualize and describe large-scale trends in social behaviors. Of interest to developmental psychologists are longitudinal analyses that could
identify the propagation of large-scale patterns of behaviors over time in
different social media contexts. Longitudinal analyses will be particularly
insightful for developmental psychologists to understand the mechanisms
involved in correlational data and for understanding human maturation,
continuity, and change, especially during important transitions in the life
span. Theoretical understandings of identity and youth development will
be critical for framing and understanding the implications of these big
data sets. Furthermore, broad patterns elucidated by big data sets must be
complemented by qualitative and in-depth studies into lived experiences
and meanings. Finally, researchers must connect online activities to offline
lives, daily rhythms, and face-to-face relationships. Understanding social
media means capturing the ways that digital tools are integrated into the
flow of daily practices and interactions.
Last but not least, in an age of globalization, research must continue to
explore the ways in which social media are incorporated into different cultural communities and systems of meaning. How will various cultural value
systems and historical traditions influence the way social media are used
and the impacts social media will have on social relationships and identity
development? As information and trends spread across the globe via social
media, they promote both cultural homogeneity and cultural heterogeneity.
The Internet is a conduit for the mass diffusion of values, meanings, and ideologies and it also foments a plurality of differentiated perspectives, all with
the capacity to be articulated on the world stage. Youth around the world
will increasingly navigate these complexities as they interact with local and
global communities. They will be called to figure out who they are under
conditions of shifting frames of meanings and values as they move back and

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forth from their immediate social contexts to global panoramas of heterogeneous perspectives depicted on their digital screens.
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FURTHER READING
Bandura, A. (2002). Growing primacy of human agency in adaptation and change in
the electronic era. European Psychologist, 7, 2–16. doi:10.1027//1016-9040.7.1.2
boyd, d. m. (2008). Why youth heart social network sites: The role of networked
publics in teenage social life. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, identity, and digital
media (pp. 119–142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Davis, K. (2012). Friendship 2.0: Adolescents’ experiences of belonging and selfdisclosure online. Journal of Adolescence, 35, 1527–1536. doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.
2012.02.013
Greenfield, P. M., Subrahmanyam, K., & Eccles, J. S. (Eds.) (2012). Special section
“Interactive Media and Human Development”. Developmental Psychology, 48(2),
343–355.
Manago, A. M., Ward, L. M., Lemm, K., Reed, L., & Seabrook, R. (in press). Facebook
involvement, objectified body consciousness, body shame, and sexual assertiveness in college women and men. Sex Roles.
Mazzarella, S. R. (Ed.) (2010). Girl wide web 2.0: Revisiting girls, the Internet and the
negotiation of identity. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Steinfield, C., Ellison, N., Lampe, C., & Vitak, J. (2012). Online social network sites
and the concept of social capital. In F. L. Lee, L. Leung, J. S. Qiu & D. Chu (Eds.),
Frontiers in new media research (pp. 115–131). New York, NY: Routledge.
Subrahmanyam, K., & Smahel, D. (2011). Digital youth: The role of media in development.
New York: Springer.
Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2011). Online communication among adolescents: An
integrated model of its attraction, opportunities, and risks. Journal of Adolescent
Health, 48, 121–127. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2010.08.020

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Walther, J. B. (2007). Selective self-presentation in computer mediated communication: Hyperpersonal dimensions of technology, language, and cognition. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 2538–2557. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2006.05.002

ADRIANA M. MANAGO SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Adriana M. Manago is an assistant professor of psychology at Western Washington University, specializing in cultural developmental psychology with
a focus on sociocultural change and social development during adolescence
and the transition to adulthood. Her research examines how shifts away from
rural agrarian forms of living in a Maya community in southern Mexico and
increasing use of communication technologies among various communities
in the United States influence gender, sexual, and identity development.
RELATED ESSAYS
Intersectionality and the Development of Self and Identity (Psychology),
Margarita Azmitia and Virginia Thomas
Neighborhoods and Cognitive Development (Psychology), Jondou Chen and
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
The Inherence Heuristic: Generating Everyday Explanations (Psychology),
Andrei Cimpian
Youth Entrepreneurship (Psychology), William Damon et al.
Resilience (Psychology), Erica D. Diminich and George A. Bonanno
Moral Identity (Psychology), Sam A. Hardy and Gustavo Carlo
Regulatory Focus Theory (Psychology), E. Tory Higgins
How Brief Social-Psychological Interventions Can Cause Enduring Effects
(Methods), Dushiyanthini (Toni) Kenthirarajah and Gregory M. Walton
Culture as Situated Cognition (Psychology), Daphna Oyserman
Born This Way: Thinking Sociologically about Essentialism (Sociology),
Kristen Schilt
Temporal Identity Integration as a Core Developmental Process (Psychology),
Moin Syed and Lauren L. Mitchell



Media and the Development
of Identity
ADRIANA M. MANAGO

Abstract
The shift from “media” to “social media” in the digital age has implications for processes of identity formation during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. First,
the Internet provides young people with opportunities to co-construct entertainment
and social environments tailored to their own needs and interests. Second, adolescents’ presentations of self take place on the same screens and in the same activity
settings in which they access commercial media programming. These changes reflect
increasing cultural emphasis on personal agency and self-expression which brings
to bear new tasks for identity development during the transition to adulthood that
involve both opportunities and challenges for creating a coherent, stable, and meaningful sense of self. In terms of opportunities, social media give youth enhanced
control over presentations of self in social interactions and increased access to social
information and large networks of others to solicit feedback and reify self-concepts.
However, social media also bring new demands to negotiate heightened pressure
to perform a socially desirable self in a commercial environment that bestows value
on attractive images and popularity. Suggestions for future research include methods
that bridge youths’ offline and online social contexts and that balance enthusiasm for
the massive quantities of data that can be aggregated via data mining technologies
with qualitative work that examines the lived experiences of adolescents’ everyday
social practices.

MEDIA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDENTITY
Identity formation in a digital age increasingly involves constructing a self in
online spaces via the same screens where commercially produced media are
accessed. While time spent gathered around a television set is declining, personalized media consumption on laptops and mobile devices is surging. In
the United States, 95% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet and the websites
they gravitate to en masse are social networking sites, capturing 80% of adolescent Internet users (Lenhart, 2012). Young people use social networking
sites to craft public personas, articulate their network of social connections,
and consume and recycle media content from the World Wide Web. Social
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

networking sites represent new kinds of social media landscapes traversed
by young people coming of age in the millennial generation.
According to Erik Erikson’s psychosocial model, coming of age requires
constructing a coherent and stable identity that has meaning and value in
society. Identity is achieved through exploration and then commitment, a
process that is propelled by decreasing dependence on parents and increasing navigation of relationships in wider social spheres during adolescence
and the transition to adulthood. Using social networking sites, youth collect
massive webs of social connections, averaging in the hundreds, and sometimes reaching into the thousands. This trend, coupled with opportunities
to broadcast a polished self-image to those large audiences of friends, have
prompted concerns that youth are in peril of identity constructions that
prioritize superficiality over substance. More sanguine perspectives see
digital worlds offering youth valuable opportunities for self-elaboration.
Polarized research findings speak to trade-offs entailed in the implications
of social media for identity development.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
TRADITIONAL MEDIA
Youth are not passive pawns indoctrinated by media programming in their
identity development. Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Learning Theory
and related empirical work suggest that youth are agents in media socialization. They actively interpret the symbols populating their media diets and
learn behaviors that are appropriate, rewarded, and valued by seeking relevant and attractive media models. According to the Media Practice Model
(Steele & Brown, 1995) and Uses and Gratifications Theory (Rubin, 1994),
adolescents’ daily media preferences and practices reflect unique navigations
of their identity concerns and personal interests. They selectively embody,
reformulate, and appropriate entertainment media to express and affirm who
they are, their tastes, their values, and what they believe in and stand for.
Moreover, media converge with peer socialization. Youth culture draws from
mass media to collectively construct what is valuable and worthwhile; adolescents develop identities by adapting to these peer cultures through social
processes (Arnett, Larson, & Offer, 1995).
SOCIAL MEDIA
Personal agency in the form of self-expression among peers is pronounced
within social media environments such as chat rooms, blogs, and bulletin
boards (Subrahmanyam & Smahel, 2011). Anonymity and the disinhibiting
effects of computer-mediated communication afford youth with enhanced

Media and the Development of Identity

3

opportunities to explore common adolescent concerns with peers, issues
such as sexuality or dealing with parents. As adolescents project their own
thoughts and issues onto digital screens, they actively shape the discourses
in their media environments and learn interactively with a larger expanse of
teens outside their immediate social circles. Teenagers can use blogs to tell
their stories, clarify their sense of self, and assert their voices in the media
landscape. Youth are no longer just consumers, but also media producers,
co-constructing online media environments to make them more precisely
relevant to their personal needs and preferences than was possible with
traditional media use.
With the explosion of social networking sites in 2005, the most popular
online media environments became less anonymous. Social networking sites
such as Facebook provide youth with an efficient way to create a virtual
Rolodex of the people they encounter in their lives, preserve past relationships or fleeting connections, and expand their social spheres. Much of what
is done on these social media websites can be called social grooming: maintaining friendships, keeping track of what contacts in the network are doing
via their public posts, what they are talking about and who they are interacting with, staying abreast of social events and trends, and managing one’s
own reputation to the network (Tufekci, 2008). As the second most popular
website in the world next to Google, Facebook and its 618 million daily active
users have made producing and consuming gossip a definitive feature of the
multimedia entertainment package on the Internet.
PERSONAL IDENTITY
Research focusing on Facebook usage among college students and high
school adolescents in Western cultures has established that online and offline
identities are fluidly intertwined rather than dichotomous. Experimental
research indicates that young people project offline identities onto digital
screens, especially in the context of social networking sites where interactions
are anchored in offline relationships (Wilson, Gosling, & Graham, 2012).
Qualitative and mixed-methods studies also show that social networking
sites promote self-conscious crafting of manicured, hoped-for, or intended
selves (Zhao, Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008). However, public feedback on
self-presentations authorizes and validates identity claims in the absence
of physical stimuli in virtual spaces (Donath, 2008). These online identity
constructions in collaboration with peers impact adolescents’ self-esteem,
further demonstrating the way online and offline identities are interrelated
(Valkenburg & Peter, 2011).

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY
Gender and sexual identity development also cross online–offline divides.
The desire to reproduce the self as physically appealing to audiences of
friends on social networking sites is widespread, evidenced by photos
and other multimedia youth broadcast that often adopt commercial media
strategies for portraying socially desirable forms of femininity, masculinity,
and sex appeal (Manago, Graham, Greenfield & Salimkhan, 2008; Ringrose,
2010). Social networking sites afford young people with increased agency
in their physical self-expression; they can reflect on and edit how they
are portrayed as they select certain backgrounds, poses, camera angles, or
position themselves in relation to others. Social media can also empower
youth to socially construct with friends, meanings for gender and sexuality
that undermine dominant paradigms (Van Doorn, 2010). As they express
their sexuality online, adolescents’ bodies are increasingly projected as
digital phenomena to be consumed alongside other commercially produced
entertainment and advertising. One implication of this trend is that girls
who use Facebook frequently show signs of self-objectification, that is,
experiencing the body not for what it does or feels like but what it looks like
to others (Tiggemann & Miller, 2010).
SOCIAL IDENTITY
Within the domain of social identity, the concept of bridging social capital has
gained the most traction by demonstrating the utility of social networking
sites for garnering social resources. Bridging social capital is robustly associated with active Facebook use; it is defined as having functional connections
with instrumental resources and information from large social webs, and
thus identifying with broad and somewhat diverse communities (Ellison,
Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007). Convenient and efficient access to public posts
from the networked public seems to foster a sense of belonging and connectedness to expansive communities beyond everyday face-to-face social
groups. Participating in these sites can also cultivate identification with specific social categories, such as ethnic social groups. For example, Facebook
supports engagement in race-related discourses with a diversity of others,
thus providing ethnic minority adolescents with opportunities to elaborate
ethnic identities (Tynes, Garcia, Giang, & Coleman, 2010). Facebook also provides youth with tools to create a profile that builds their ethnic self-concept
(Grasmuck, Martin, & Zhao, 2009).

Media and the Development of Identity

5

CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Increased opportunities for personal agency and self-expression on social
media present polarizing questions for identity researchers. Do social media
provide access to social resources that promote identity exploration, elaboration, and clarification during adolescence and the transition to adulthood?
Alternatively, does the ability to broadcast the self to large audiences of
friends rob youth of a sense of privacy or intimacy in social relations and
promote hollow self-concepts and forms of self-worth based on concerns
about reputation and popularity? On the one hand, social networking
sites do allow youth to experiment with various aspects of themselves
online and gauge feedback from peers. Because online communications are
asynchronous, youth can control their presentations of self, reflect on who
they are and who they want to be, perhaps actualize idealized or potential
selves into a shared social reality. The more they circulate self-concepts
with others, the more likely those traits are integrated into a sense self. On
the other hand, communicating and presenting the self in a one-to-many
style, as if on stage to an audience of others, and strategically selecting
flattering photos or cleverly worded public comments could also encourage
self-involvement and a heightened concern with social approval.
There does seem to be a link between the proliferation of social media
and increasing self-involvement among youth in the millennial generation
(Twenge, 2013). The process of image management to large amorphous networked publics on social networking sites seems to encourage notions of the
self as a brand to be socially marketed (Marwick & boyd, 2011; Salimkhan,
Manago, & Greenfield, 2010). Moreover, popularity seeking is one of the
most important motivating forces of Facebook use among undergraduates
(Lee, Moore, Park, & Park, 2012; Utz, Tanis, & Vermeulen, 2012), suggesting
that sociality on Facebook is more self-focused rather than other-focused.
Furthermore, building a profile that filters negative information and highlights positive information about the self, and then traversing through the
network via this digital representation, likely promotes increased consideration of one’s self-image and a positively biased sense of self-awareness. In
fact, Facebook use is associated with enhanced self-views (Gentile, Twenge,
Freeman, & Campbell, 2012; Gonzales & Hancock, 2011; Kim & Lee, 2011).
Another perspective in the literature emphasizes that new norms for sociality and personhood in the digital age reflect shifting value priorities conducive to more elaborated identity constructions. Evidence suggests that it is
not narcissistic self-involvement, but openness to sharing information about

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

oneself that predicts self-focused status updates and photo sharing on Facebook (McKinney, Kelly, & Duran, 2012). Personal self-expression is increasingly emphasized and valued in an age of social media where the production and distribution of entertainment is decentralized away from large commercial enterprises. In fact, the process of acculturating to Facebook entails
increasing public self-expression. Large-scale studies with college students
(Christofides, Muise, & Desmarais, 2009) and with the general population of
Facebook users (Burke, Marlow, & Lento, 2010) illustrate that individuals’
public self-disclosures on the site increase as more people in their networks
disclose.
In essence, millennial youth growing up with social media may increasingly prioritize the role of self-expression in social connectivity compared
to previous generations. Indeed, an intergenerational study of MySpace
showed that adolescents (13–19 years) compared to older users (over 60
years old) disclose more emotions in their self-descriptions and broadcast
those self-expressions to larger networks (Pfeil, Arjan, & Zaphiris, 2009).
Emotional self-disclosure is the most popular use of the status update feature
on Facebook, and college students perceive increased social support the
more friends they estimate observing those status updates (Manago, Taylor,
& Greenfield, 2012). In addition, larger audience size for status updates is
associated with more shallow social networks consisting of loose ties and
distant friendships such as fleeting acquaintances. Thus, the proliferation
of social media reflects sociocultural changes in practices, meanings, and
values for social connection that prioritize personal self-expression, asserting one’s voice in the media landscape and painting portraits of the self
to solidify one’s place within very large communities of close and distant
others.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Social media present both new opportunities and challenges for the process of identity development. One way to frame discussions surrounding
identity development and social media is to delineate the tasks involved
in forming a coherent, stable, and valued sense of self in a digital society
that affords increasing personal agency and self-expression, and convenient
access to large social networks. A focus on tasks moves researchers away
from conceptualizing studies in terms of either ominous or overly optimistic
questions about the impacts of communication technologies on human
development. Rather, it encourages examinations of the ways in which
social media are part of shifting social norms, meanings, and values that
give rise to new milestones adolescents must navigate as they form a mature
sense of self. Many of the identity development tasks that adolescents now

Media and the Development of Identity

7

face revolve around consolidating a sense of meaning and self-worth, given
extensive opportunities for identity exploration, and a heightened emphasis
on forming a digitally represented and socially desirable reputation in
networked publics.
EXPLORATION AND COMMITMENT
Much of the research on identity development has traditionally used James
Marcia’s Identity Status Model to examine the ways in which adolescents
move through a period of identity exploration to a state of commitment,
that is, dedication to an autonomously negotiated set of stable self structures
that is adaptive to one’s social world. Millennial youth possess enhanced
capabilities to engage in identity exploration via Internet highways through
diverse communities of ideas and information. Indeed, Mimi Ito et al. (2010)
have found that digital youth venture into potentially rich learning landscapes online, cultivating expertise in niche interests by using social media
to “geek-out” with other like-minded individuals.
However, the nearly unlimited possibilities online combined with a bombardment of stimulation and distractions plus new opportunities to engage
in anonymity in virtual spaces could also inhibit the process of consolidation
and commitment. Very little research has examined the role of social media in
the process of identity commitment, although early work suggests that the
utility of the Internet in identity consolidation depends on whether online
usage is balanced with identity work in offline relationships (Valkenburg &
Peter, 2008). A topic ripe for new research is how identity fragmentation versus self-concept unity could arise from social media use, depending on how
usage is balanced with offline interactions and depending on the personal
and social resources young people bring to the table.
SELF-VALIDATION
Another important component of identity development is forming an identity that is personally meaningful and also socially sanctioned. Interestingly,
social media paradoxically engender increased expression of unique selves
and also increased access to the opinions of others. Thus, millennial youth
face new tasks in coordinating heightened capacities for social validation and
autonomous expression as they process who they are during adolescence and
emerging adulthood. With access to information and feedback from multiple
and diverse social groups in their online networks, youth could be cultivating
sophisticated capabilities for sourcing multiple points of view to formulate
an independent sense of self. Alternatively, crafting a self in anticipation of
feedback from large networks of peers may also foster dependence on social

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

validation and peer approval. In the context of social media, youth must reconcile the increasing salience and availability of others’ opinions with their
own internal locus of security, confidence, and stability.
SELF-WORTH
Because attention to the self is often a goal on social networking sites, these
online self-presentation contexts could foster fragile self-esteem by creating
pressure to construct a socially desirable identity that attracts attention and
publicity. A study examining associations between social networking sites
and college students’ sources of self-worth found that frequency of Facebook
use was associated with public-based contingencies of self-worth, that is,
self-satisfaction dependent on social approval and appearances (Stefanone,
Lackaff, & Rosen, 2011). Heightened awareness of the self as an image to be
evaluated and valued based on attractiveness could also explain previously
mentioned associations between Facebook use and self-objectification among
adolescent girls (Tiggemann & Miller, 2010). These studies are correlational,
meaning that it could be that youth who are attuned to social approval and
who are concerned with appearances are drawn to use Facebook in the first
place. However, it is also not hard to imagine that spending time broadcasting the self to large audiences could foster an orientation toward psychological absorption with self-image and popularity. These are sources of self-worth
that may be variable and fluctuating, leading to fragility in self-worth.
Using social networking sites to observe others, rather than to broadcast
the self, also has implications for self-worth. Although it may promote
bridging social capital, youth engaged in social information gathering
on Facebook are likely to be exposed to unrealistic standards from their
contacts because posted content tends to be manicured for public broadcasting. Upward social comparisons are elicited when young people browse
through information posted by friends in the newsfeed and unwittingly
conclude, based on a disproportionate amount of positive data from users’
promotional content, that others have better lives than they do (Chou &
Edge, 2012). Upward social comparison resulting from the consumption
of misleading media content may be detrimental to identity development,
discouraging youth as they reflect on their progress or achievements relative
to their counterparts on Facebook. By balancing out the consumption of rosy
pictures posted by acquaintances online, face-to-face relationships can help
youth gauge their standing in the world in more realistic ways.

Media and the Development of Identity

9

NEGOTIATING A PUBLIC PERSONA
Healthy adolescent identity development also involves learning to negotiate
and integrate multiple aspects of the self that exist in different social contexts,
for example, the self that exists with parents versus school teachers, friends
who are jocks versus friends who are computer geeks. Interestingly, the collection of diverse contacts in one locale in the online social network presents
the opposite problem, one that constrains multiple social identities. When
youth post status updates or upload photographs from their latest social
event, they are communicating to the entire network of known others who
likely have multiple beliefs, opinions, or hold various roles of authority in
their lives, a phenomenon known as context collapse (Marwick & boyd, 2011).
In addition, as preadolescents and adolescents begin to construct an online
identity profile, they must come to understand the repercussions of their
identity expressions being permanently indexed in digital storehouses and
potentially accessed by unknown others. The need to appropriately package the self as a public spectacle, and edit self-expressions for potentially
unknown future audiences, presents new challenges and also opportunities
for growth and maturity. Youth may desire to express their deepest thoughts,
their uniqueness and individuality, and must also yield to a certain amount
of conformity in their self-presentations so as not to offend differing social
groups, to attract multiple audiences to their posts, and to avoid potentially
incriminating information that could come back to haunt them at a later date.
How will youth come to understand themselves knowing that their digital
self-expressions will constitute permanent and perhaps publicly searchable
records of their identities? How will they negotiate a desire for attention from
an audience with a desire to be authentic and unique? How might the opportunity to create a personal brand for public consumption offer a new vehicle
for consolidating a sense of self and how might it flatten the complexity and
flexibility of self-constructions that are attuned to various social situations?
In general, the line between media commercialism and self-portrayals is
increasingly blurred in an age of social media. Identity development has long
involved negotiating meanings and values from pop culture and commercial entertainment, yet as youth face new image management demands on
the same screens where they access multimedia commercial stimuli, what is
at stake is a sense of authenticity and self-worth that transcends commercial values and one-dimensional marketing packages. Identity researchers in
the coming years will be challenged to understand how to help youth feel
empowered by social media to express who they are and cultivate their interests and expertise while avoiding attachment to a conditionally valued public
persona constructed around mass appeal.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

RESEARCH METHODS AND PARADIGMS
On the research horizon are bridges across methodological and disciplinary
paradigms. Future research will require developmental psychologists to
understand broad societal-level trends articulated by sociologists and
communication researchers that are impacting young people’s social
development. Social structures penetrate and shape interpersonal relationships that constitute cultural environments and thus shape intrapersonal
dynamics, including emotional and cognitive processing during identity
development. Moreover, interdisciplinary approaches are well-suited to
take advantage of the increasing viability of tracking enormous amounts
of data from traces of human behavior projected onto digital screens. “Big
data” promises to transform behavioral research by allowing researchers
to visualize and describe large-scale trends in social behaviors. Of interest to developmental psychologists are longitudinal analyses that could
identify the propagation of large-scale patterns of behaviors over time in
different social media contexts. Longitudinal analyses will be particularly
insightful for developmental psychologists to understand the mechanisms
involved in correlational data and for understanding human maturation,
continuity, and change, especially during important transitions in the life
span. Theoretical understandings of identity and youth development will
be critical for framing and understanding the implications of these big
data sets. Furthermore, broad patterns elucidated by big data sets must be
complemented by qualitative and in-depth studies into lived experiences
and meanings. Finally, researchers must connect online activities to offline
lives, daily rhythms, and face-to-face relationships. Understanding social
media means capturing the ways that digital tools are integrated into the
flow of daily practices and interactions.
Last but not least, in an age of globalization, research must continue to
explore the ways in which social media are incorporated into different cultural communities and systems of meaning. How will various cultural value
systems and historical traditions influence the way social media are used
and the impacts social media will have on social relationships and identity
development? As information and trends spread across the globe via social
media, they promote both cultural homogeneity and cultural heterogeneity.
The Internet is a conduit for the mass diffusion of values, meanings, and ideologies and it also foments a plurality of differentiated perspectives, all with
the capacity to be articulated on the world stage. Youth around the world
will increasingly navigate these complexities as they interact with local and
global communities. They will be called to figure out who they are under
conditions of shifting frames of meanings and values as they move back and

Media and the Development of Identity

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forth from their immediate social contexts to global panoramas of heterogeneous perspectives depicted on their digital screens.
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integrated model of its attraction, opportunities, and risks. Journal of Adolescent
Health, 48, 121–127. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2010.08.020

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Walther, J. B. (2007). Selective self-presentation in computer mediated communication: Hyperpersonal dimensions of technology, language, and cognition. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 2538–2557. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2006.05.002

ADRIANA M. MANAGO SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Adriana M. Manago is an assistant professor of psychology at Western Washington University, specializing in cultural developmental psychology with
a focus on sociocultural change and social development during adolescence
and the transition to adulthood. Her research examines how shifts away from
rural agrarian forms of living in a Maya community in southern Mexico and
increasing use of communication technologies among various communities
in the United States influence gender, sexual, and identity development.
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