Constructing an Online Identity

I was reading the Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe article late last night. The very last line in the abstract jumped out at me. "....Facebook usage was found to interact with measures of psychological well-being, suggesting it might provide greater benefits for users experiencing low self-esteem and low life satisfaction." I thought that if this article had appeared in a more widely read publication, that particular finding might have sparked mass outrage. I could imagine reader responses like "I'm on Facebook all the time and there's nothing wrong with my life!" the finding may be true but it's probably a good thing very few people know about it.

I'm not on Facebook all the time. In fact, I regularly feel like I'm the last human being on this planet to not have an online profile. If nothing else, I'm grateful that taking this class will at least allow me to talk the talk. But I am one of those people who is more comfortable on email than on the phone (of course in person works better for me than phone any day). And my reasons echo some of the reasons that explain why people like to present themselves online. Because it gives me a chance to polish up my communication before its too late. But does that mean I never regret any email I send. No way. Even with the opportunity to pause for thought before clicking Send, I find that I stop and think a lot less than maybe I should. In fact as i think about it, the longer I've used email, the less I've come to think of it as a different medium, with different possibilities and constraints. It's become just another way to talk to someone. With all the pitfalls that entails.

I'm wandering a little here so let me get to the point. I don't have a Facebook profile but I imagine someone creating a profile would spend a lot of time picking out a good picture, sending out friend invitations and writing pithy but profound things about themselves. As you start to use it more and more, could your time on a site like facebook become so much a part of your everyday stay-in-touch routine that you stop constructing yourself and just "be?" Would you screen your actions less as you use something like this more? Just wondering.