A few decades ago, your status was determined by the size of your house or by the type of car you drove. This status is now dominated by your online presence.
Social media, like Facebook and Twitter, are shaping people's streams of confidence and self-worth. With tools such as "commenting" people's pictures, or "liking" someone's wall post, users are increasingly seeking gratification from such reaction on their social media profiles.
It's as simple as this: Grace gets a brand-spankin' new hairdo, and posts a picture of her new hair. Instead of seeking opinions from a few family and friends like previously, Grace's new haircut is now being judged by her entire friend's list; a list that includes childhood friends, coworkers or teachers, and mere acquaintances. With every "notification" that she gets regarding this picture, she can either feel great about her haircut or think it's extremely lousy based off her so called "friends" reactions; so she stays glued to her Facebook page to help give her a reaffirmation of her haircut.
Besides just appearances, more serious matters are being judged, such as intellect and professional experience. Where you got your education, which company you are currently employed at, and even your interests in entertainment comprise your complete online presence. This presence becomes the cyber version of yourself, and stays in cyberspace to be constantly perused, accidentally encountered, and ultimately judged.
Social status has also evolved due to the digitization of one's network. People you connect with on Facebook are called "friends," and people who want to read your tweets on Twitter are known as "followers." The makers of these media are smart in choosing their words; using friends & followers to indicate a social media presence adds a level of competition among these sites that will drives the number of unique users skyward. It has evolved from the high school group of "cool kids" to the tech geek on Twitter who has followers from all seven continents.
With all of these devices utilized in social media, is it no wonder that younger generations are almost addicted to Facebook and Twitter. Once the major source of self gratification and self worth is achieved through the number of comments one gets on a picture or the multitude of "retweets" on Twitter, why would these users even worry about the size of their house? Social media has created a cheap thrill in reaffirmation by constantly nurturing a pseudo social identity, and as long as the world keeps going in a more digitized platform, serious identity issues become the inevitable.
All very excellent points. As you mentioned, we are constantly being evaluated even at an intellectual level. If we put a status that no one likes or comments, it's almost embarrassing, as if you said something out loud in a room full of people and all you heard were crickets. Our simplest, everyday ideas are being judged. This can open the doors to the discussion of the online persona we project onto everyone else, but that's a whole other article. (hint) Additionally, we voluntarily put out these pictures, posts, videos, etc. partly to display our interests, but also to receive that gratification of someone else approving of it. It doesn't just come upon us, we seek it.
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