Delving into “Self-Construction” in the Era of Social Media

Abstract

With the prevalence of social media, more and more people are getting involved into this new way of communication and sharing. Despite of the convenience of connection and information exchange facilitated by social media, one of the accompanying concerns is the difference and comparison between online and real life contents. Several studies showed that exposure to idealized and attractive posts could negatively impact people’s emotions, self-disclosure behaviors, and self-perception. This study aimed to experimentally investigate individuals’ social media feeds, especially about daily life contents, on their posting behaviors and attitudes toward life. 512 participants were randomly assigned to view one of three sets of simulated feeds: idealized life posts with positive emotions expressed, realistic life posts with negative emotions expressed, and mixed life posts (selected from idealized set and realistic set). Data analysis across these three groups indicated that realistic posts exerted negative influences on respondents’ mood, level of life satisfaction, and self-evaluation, but idealized posts had no impact on them. Meanwhile, neither idealized nor realistic posts were found to affect respondents’ posting behavior.