Identity and Validation, Brokered by Twitter and Facebook

Cell Phones Everywhere by Scott Abelman

Peggy Orenstein in the Sunday Times Magazine ponders the emerging trend of sharing even our most mundane thoughts externally, in I Tweet, Therefore I Am..

On a recent lazy Saturday morning, my daughter and I lolled on a blanket in our front yard, snacking on apricots, listening to a download of E. B. White reading “The Trumpet of the Swan.” Her legs sprawled across mine; the grass tickled our ankles. It was the quintessential summer moment, and a year ago, I would have been fully present for it. But instead, a part of my consciousness had split off and was observing the scene from the outside: this was, I realized excitedly, the perfect opportunity for a tweet.

In describing this new desire, Orenstein raises the question that arises from this always-connected-real-time world: is this way of living better or worse than the way we used to craft our sense of self? Of happiness?

I asked the same question of myself last summer:

I worry a little bit when I go someplace new/interesting/beautiful that instead of experiencing it, I reach to my cameraphone. My modern technological instinct is that I won't get the gratification of going to this place *unless* I capture it in photograph and wait for the flickr/twitter/facebook comments to roll in.

Why can't I just inhabit the space in the moment?

Orenstein takes this to it's logical conclusion, but doesn't pretend that there's any turning back..

The expansion of our digital universe — Second Life, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter — has shifted not only how we spend our time but also how we construct identity. For her coming book, “Alone Together,” Sherry Turkle, a professor at M.I.T., interviewed more than 400 children and parents about their use of social media and cellphones. Among young people especially she found that the self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather than internally developed: a series of profiles to be sculptured and refined in response to public opinion. “On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you are,” she explained. “But because you’re also creating something for others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. Your psychology becomes a performance.”

The fun of Twitter and, I suspect, its draw for millions of people, is its infinite potential for connection, as well as its opportunity for self-expression. I enjoy those things myself. But when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy? The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self, is that it erodes the very relationships it purports to create, and alienates us from our own humanity.

How do we re-take control of the personal reflective time we used to encounter on those quiet summer afternoons? Do we really need external forces to let us know that we're having a good (or bad) time?

For me, and from time to time, the best way to ensure this is by leaving my phone at home.