Adolescents’ Online And Offline Identity: A Study On Self-Representation

Abstract

Adolescence represents a crucial period for the construction of personal and social identity. Nowadays, youths create their offline and online identity, as an undistinguishable and complex Self. Adolescents, indeed, construct their online identity as an integration of their physical and virtual persona. This integration might be difficult to represent and communicate to others. The Internet is widely spread among adolescents, and it can favour the development of risky online behaviours, which in turn can involve the occurrence of youth’s negative consequences, such as emotional problems, or difficulties in social behaviours. The present study intends to explore, in a sample of Italian adolescents, the capacity of representing the online and offline identity. This capacity is hypothesized to result in an adaptive use of the web. The sample was composed by 200 Italian adolescents, aged 14-17 years, who filled out an adhoc questionnaire tapping different aspects of representation of virtual reality. Adolescents revealed an unclear representation of their virtual identity. Because of their difficulties in identifying the relationship between the real and the virtual identity, the consequences of their activities in the web and in virtual communities are frequently underestimated. Identity and representation of the Self that adolescents express through social networks are very complex topics and the relationship between real and virtual identity needs further research, to carry out effective programs of prevention and intervention of problematic internet use in adolescence.

Keywords: Adolescenceonline behavioursvirtual identity

Introduction

Problem Statement

Research Questions

While the above studies have explored the points of contact and divergence between the real and

the virtual identity, to our knowledge less attention has been devoted to adolescents’ Self-representation,

that is the ability to ponder up on the representations of the Self manifested in the virtual world. Although

the interdependence between "real identity” and “virtual identity" has been widely demonstrated, many

young people appear capable of describing their actions in the virtual world (chatting, posting, sharing

materials) but they are lacking the ability to understand that online behaviour is a projection of their real

identity (self-consciousness). If they had this capacity, adolescents would be able to navigate responsibly

and safely.

Overall, the absence of studies on the formation and evolution of adolescents’ self-representation

in the virtual world, does not favour the development of research programs aimed at understanding how

the representations of the self, which is also connected with the quality of the experiences in the digital

world, may lead to original and coherent virtual identity.

Purpose of the Study

Based on the aforementioned literature, our study was developed to shed light on adolescents’

Self-representation in the virtual world. More specifically, taking into account previous literature, the

current study sought to provide a comprehensive view on adolescents’ online and offline identity, by

examining various aspects of representation of virtual reality. This study only focuses on the use of the

Internet for communicating. It intends to explore, in a sample of adolescents in the general population, the

capacity of representing their online and offline identity. This capacity is hypothesized to result in an

adaptive use of the web.

We hypothesized that a higher understanding of the relationship of interdependence between the

information adolescents publish online (virtual identity) and their personality traits (real identity) is

associated with a higher capacity to protect themselves during the networking activities.

Research Methods

A cross-sectional design was applied for the purposes of the study.

Findings

Overall, our findings revealed an unclear representation of their virtual identity in adolescents

study participants.

The research showed that the majority of the surveyed adolescents, aged between thirteen and

nineteen years, were frequently not able to conceptualize their virtual identity, being incapable of

grasping and defining the interdependence between their real and virtual identities. The posts, chats,

photos and videos are only "rarely or sometimes" considered manifestations of the real identity.

Adolescents, on the other hand, seem to have an awareness of their “being online”, showing to be

aware of actions and emotions they experience during their online social life.

However, adolescents’ virtual identity results poorly integrated, since youths do not consider the

posts, videos and photos they share online as symbols of their persona.

Regarding the section Intra- and inter-system consistency, adolescents seem not consistent in their

networking activities. For instance, only 10% of respondents refer to often or always publishing the same

content in Facebook as in other social networks. Similarly, only the 25% of respondents consider "often

or always" the content of their last posting before posting a new message, whereas about 30% of subjects

"often or always" try to make others understand their values, in order to bring out a distinctive feature of

their identity.

Regarding the section "Protection", the adolescents’ ability to protect themselves appears

insufficiently articulated. Indeed, about 30% of subjects reported being involved in cyberbullying,

whereas half of the subjects often use foul language in their public comments. Moreover, analyses of the

characteristics of adolescents engaged in online activities revealed that while more than half participants

reported “often or always” thinking about reputation before publishing to Facebook, far fewer subjects

think "often or always" before posting in other social networks (30%). Therefore, in general, many young

people think they can post or publish contents online without particular consequences for their reputation

online. Finally, our data identified that at least one student out of ten performs activities that may

seriously affect their reputation. Ten students reported that they “often” posted photos or videos in which

is possible to see the body. Overall, 11% of the students practice a form of sexting.

With regards to the section of Sense of the Virtual Self, the majority of adolescents tends to have a

good awareness of their actions and emotions. They also remember what they have experimented online.

For instance, more than 80% of participants evaluate the possible offensive content of their post and

communications. Many of them, similarly, are able to understand if someone could feel bad because of

their posts.

Finally, with respect to section Categorization of virtual identity, students fail to represent their

virtual identity. Indeed, despite about the 70% of respondents believe that the personality shown in

everyday life has something in common with the identity they show online, only for 25% of them

published posts, pictures and videos may express something of their personality or way of being. Thus,

for almost the entire sample, posts, photos and videos do give access to their real personality. More in

particular, not being able to conceptualize that the posts, chats, videos and photos are the

phenomenological dimension through which their identity manifests online, students felt that these online

posting do not reflect something of their values and their character.

Conclusion

Starting from previous literature on adolescents’ online social activities, the present study aimed to

explore the Internet use and the self-representation characteristics among adolescents. More specifically,

the current study intended to investigate the capacity of pondering on the self-representations in the

virtual world in a sample of N = 200 Italian adolescents.

Data emerged from our study confirmed the results of previous studies, according to which adults

and minors do not have a clear representation of their virtual identity, nor of the interdependence between

online and offline identity. Moreover, our results have shown that adolescents of our sample frequently

underestimate the consequences of their activities in the web and in virtual communities, probably

because of their difficulties in identifying the relationship between the real and the virtual identity,

Our findings are consistent with recent observations by Fullwood, James and Chen-Wilson (2016),

who highlighted that adolescents who have a poorly integrated identity and self-representation are more

prone to manifest an idealized version of themselves in the Internet, while youths with a more stable (and

therefore more self-aware) self-representation have a more coherent and unitary self-representation.

Our research subjects seem to be aware of their behaviours and emotions during their online social

activities, showing what we could call Sense of virtual self, paraphrasing Stern (1987). On the other hand,

adolescents involved in on line activities are not always able to reflect on the relationship between real

identity and virtual identity on the web. In this sense, we could compare the digital natives, who have

come in recent years to the virtual world, to new-born babies who, through their relationship with

significant adults, gradually build their Self, through consistent and recurring interactive patterns,.

Identity and representation of the Self that adolescents express through social networks are very

complex topics and the relationship between real and virtual identity needs further research, to carry out

effective programs of prevention and intervention of problematic internet use in adolescence and

maladaptive behaviour in general (Erriu, 2016; Morioka et al., 2017).

Health care professionals should try to better understand adolescent online activities, as youth need

guidance on safe Internet use. Given the dangers associated with risk online behaviour, clinicians and

professionals should deeply discuss problematic Internet use with adolescent patients and their parents.

A number of limitations of this study warrant discussion. The main limitation involves the use of a

self-report, not widely validated questionnaire. Although questionnaires are the most appropriate

instruments by which to gather information on subjective processes, such as identity, the biases involved

in self-reports may be taken into account. Thus, caution is recommended before generalizing the results of

the present study. Nonetheless, our results offer an interesting interpretation to frame the issue of

adolescents’ virtual identity. Firm conclusions about our research question cannot be made. Moreover,

our results also require further testing in a wider cultural context.

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