Social media can have both positive and negative impacts on a user's identity. Psychology and Communication scholars study the relationship between social media and identity in order to understand individual behavior, psychological impact, and social patterns. Communication within political or social groups online can result in practice application of those identities or adoption of them as a whole. Young people, defined as emerging adults in or entering college, especially shape their identities through social media.
Young adults
At the stage where a young adult becomes an emerging adult, individuals are especially influenced by social media. Psychologists study methods of self-presentation to determine how a user's patterns and media participation affects their own identity. Young adults, through media literacies, can also find their identity as a part of a social group, such as feminists. These studies are connected to building frameworks for educators on teaching media literacies. Due to their fluency in media literacy, young people often contribute to these larger social identities through their networks, and unique style of communication when sharing information.
Young Individuals have been found to be affected by what they take in on Social Media. Psychologists believe that at a time when young adults are coming into adolescence, they are more likely to be influenced by what they see on sites like Instagram or Twitter. More so directed towards the times of Identity Formation, as these individuals are impressionable and still creating their identity. With the advance of social media, most young adults will widely share, with varying degrees of accuracy, honesty, and openness, information that in the past would have been private or reserved for select individuals. Key questions include whether they accurately portray their identities online and whether the use of social media might impact young adults’ identity development. Media Imagery, in particular, is said to be a major influence on the minds of young men and women. Studies have shown that it is even more relevant when it comes to the issue of body image. Social Media, in part, has been created to host a safe haven for those who do not claim a solid identity in the material world, giving them a chance for exploration of other identities in the virtual concept. Psychologists and Scholars have noted that past identities are not easy to escaped from; the Internet is more permanent.
Social media is an essential part of the social lives of young adults. They rely on it to maintain relationships, create new relationships, and stay up to date with the world around them. Adolescents find social media to be extremely helpful when changing environments, like moving off to university for example. Social media provides students, especially first year students, the opportunity to create the identity they want the world to see. However, it has been seen that these students create online personas that may not reflect their true selves bringing up the issues of impression management. Social media provides young adults with the opportunity to present themselves as something other than their authentic self.
Media literacy
The definition of media literacy has evolved over time to encompass a range of experiences that can occur in social media or other digital spaces. Currently, media literacy includes being able to understand, apply, and share digital images and messages. Educators teach media literacy skills because of the vulnerable relationship that young adults can have with social media. Some examples of media literacy practices, particularly on Twitter, include using hashtags, live tweeting, and sharing information.
The definition of media literacy is extremely broad and wide ranging in its context. In order to be considered media-literate, a person must be able to take in media from online and social platforms and have the correct competencies and context to be able to organize the information given to the user in a way that it can be put into the correct perspective and analyzed, deducted and synthesized.
Teenagers and young adults can be vulnerable to specific content online outside of their age-range. Media literacy campaigns and education should target those who fall into this age category to better target their needs as online users.
While there are multiple individual studies investigating social media identity relating to media literacy online, there is a need for much more conclusive information that analyzes multiple studies at a time and social media literacy is still considered an under-researched topic.