Just as media cannot be defined simply as good or bad, my feelings for media cannot be determined simply by liking or disliking it. The ego in the digital world based on the data uploaded by ourselves can make us either happy or unhappy. In my personal opinion, it’s complicated because the media has permeated our lives so deeply that I feel like I can’t live without it anymore, but it doesn’t always bring us a positive effect in our lives. I sometimes make these considerations when using social media. Are people’s appearances on social media the same as in real life? Sometimes, when I’m using social media such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, I perceive that myself in the digital world and myself in the real world are different. To be more specific, when you take a look at the photos posted on Instagram, everyone looks happy, superior, and beautiful. What I observed through this was that social media mainly shows only the images that people want to show to others. People not only just edit or photoshop the photos, but also fake the background, location, and props in order to upload an Instagram worthy picture. I would like to call this the identity of the digital world created by our desires. In terms of the media itself, I think of it quite positively. With the popularization of smartphones in the 2010s and the creation of an environment that allows easy access to the Internet, you can easily meet and chat with friends, acquaintances, or unspecified people online as well as offline, and various things can be shared such as photos and videos. As a result of this, it is noteworthy that digital identity is increasing exponentially.
Hence, how should we look at the new existence? It raises the question of whether this existence can be identified with the identity of the real world and to what extent this existence will affect the future. First of all, I believe that the identity in the digital world is one’s self and is not one’s self at the same time. Nevertheless, if I have to settle one side, I would like to identify with the identity of the real world and the digital world. Referring to existentialism, human nature is neither indeterminate nor fixed. A person’s essence is determined by how the person lives. In other words, existence precedes essence. Therefore, even if you upload data that is different from reality, that is eventually also myself. Next, I predict that the influence of the identity of this digital world will probably be negative in the future. The greater the gap between the two identities, the greater the risk of exacerbating the situation as reliance on social media increases. To illustrate, the more superior the ‘digital world identity’, the greater the gap between the ‘real world identity’. If this happens, I think that one of the two identities will eventually collapse.
Media is indispensable in the world we live in now and brings us many advantages and conveniences. In addition, it is a medium that forms ourselves and can bring confusion simultaneously, and it will shape the future world itself, whether better or worse.
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Why I Heart My Media 