Introduction

 We all have experienced such phenomena before: we use someone whom we think has similar standpoints or characteristics: usually our peers, colleagues, or even strangers, as a standard or benchmark to evaluate ourselves using a series of criteria that are relevant to us. In more common terms, such experiences are like “Oh my classmate Ben got an A on this quiz but I only got a B-” or “My friend Jack got accepted into Ivy League prestige school while I only got an offer from a local public university”. This is the idea known as social comparison.

As social animals, social comparison is a psychological impulse that’s extremely difficult to resist. Furthermore, numerous sociological and psychological researches have already explored, examined, and concluded the relationships between various types of social comparisons and one’s mental/physical health conditions. For instance, in their psychological research, Allan and Gilbert have already revealed that downward social comparisons generate overall positive effects on one’s conditions such as less anxiety and elevated self-esteem. Conversely, upward social comparisons lead to numerous negative health outcomes (Gilbert, P., Allan, S., 2002).  

Additionally, the idea of identity or persona has to do with how an individual deliberately and purposefully constructs him/herself and how he/she purposefully chooses to present it in a specific manner to pre-selected social groups. Similarly, the idea of identity and persona has been a frequent subject across academic realms such as psychology, anthropology, cultural studies and so on. Among these researches, scholars thoroughly inspected issues in real life such as identities and race, gender, and the consequent transformation of identity.

Nevertheless, technological advancements resulted in the rapid expansions of social media platforms and the quick adoption of such new realities by users worldwide. With it, social interactions as we knew it shifted dramatically. Unique attributes of social media platforms have made a vast majority of former sets of principles, experiences, conclusions, and findings gradually becoming more divergent than ever before.

Even though the general society has always been precipitating its societal members to present or put forward their “best self” since the dawn of humanity, digital spheres (i.e. social media) furnish people with the abilities to refine and elaborate their online persona over and over again. During such processes, the burden of presenting perfections unfolded, fueled by social comparisons. 

Therefore, this paper aims at becoming the connection between the past, the present, and the future by taking a closer inspection at social media platforms in an effort to examine the issue of the correlations that exist between constant online social comparison and its impacts on online identity and online persona. More specifically, I will be talking about how online social comparison amplifies standards of all sort to an unprecedented level, how it influences and coerces people to construct perfectly curated online persona and the consequent phenomena. In addition to that, this paper is also striving to uncover the challenges revolving the issue like the difficulties of conducting researches on the topic for it is extremely laborious and demanding to gather data; and also the opportunities relating to the issue such as how it gives people the opportunities to experiment with different identities, solidifying existing offline identities while perfecting online ones, and how the commodification of identity sparked thriving business model like Online Identity Management. Finally, I will also be presenting my personal stance and point of view on the topic and also advocating for various potential solutions to confront and tackle the issue that affect the vast majority of us.

Historic Trajectory

In the beginning, the invention of the Internet enabled endless possibilities. Initially, people treated Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) as a mere extension of our interpersonal communication and social interactions, meaning that it was still largely based on our real-life experiences and connections. At the time, we predominately utilized CMCs as instruments and apparatus to aid our pre-existing relationships in forms such as communicating with families and friends who were physically located over a long distance via methods like emailing. Thus, early researches emphasized more on the notion of how CMC, due to the lack of face to face interactions, along with the distortion of characteristics of qualities like expressions and emotions, was harmful to real-life relationships.

Right around the turn of the century, however, when earlier forms of “social media” such as forums, chat rooms, or even online multiplayer games emerged, scholars alike instituted investigations and researches into inspecting how these CMCs were no longer just extensions of real life. Rather, they have transformed into an alternative, standalone reality in and of itself. With that, researchers began to look at some of the unique properties of newer online interactions made possible by the Internet’s infinite capacity. The initial trends were a series of attempts trying to understand the influences and impacts of such new realities. They began when scholars focused on the (re)constructions of one’s identity within particular online communities. Among which the most vital subject of explorations was gamers of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG). Scholars such as Pinto and Reale concluded that due to the experimental nature of these MMORPGs, they provided an ideal, staged reality where players can create, test, revise, delete different online identities, or even own multiple identities at the same time (Pinto et al., 2015)

Ever since the 2000s, we live in a reality where new platforms and novel features are being developed, released, and widely adopted on a daily basis. Many of these features are aggravating the issue of social comparisons online. Hence, if we can slow down for a bit, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to perceive such issues are indeed distressing and agitating our lives like never before: they are so pervasive and omnipresent that we somehow became oblivious to them.

With that being said, foregoing researches have already analyzed the processes and practices of online identity constructions. Some of them even detailed the strategies users adopted in other common forms of online realities popular at the time. Nevertheless, the issue of social comparison in an online context is an on-going dialogue. In this paper, the goal is to amend such legacy researches, equip them with modern discourses, in order to discuss and tackle the issues of social comparison and consequently the compelled identity construction existing in the most prevailing form of CMC to date: Social Media.

Influence and Impact on Culture

One serious impact online social comparison has on society as a whole and also on individuals’ identities is the fact that it amplifies standards to unprecedented levels. The vital reason as for why social comparison has become so notoriously intrusive and pervasive is because of its “online” characteristics. This is because the Internet de-restricted preceding barriers like geological, chronological and linguistic ones. As a result, people are subject to more and more comparisons as there are virtually no limits on where do their online social circles end. As Wiederhold illustrated, social media platforms such as Instagram, given its nature of being users’ highlight reel, urge unrealistic expectations. Such raised standards include the standard of beauty, wealth, accomplishments and so on and so forth (Wiederhold, 2018).

On Instagram’s “Discover” tab, which is a personalized feed that contains a collage of photos and videos that are generated by algorithms based on your past likes and views, have nearly endless arrays of posts by strangers or someone whom many of your friends follow. For instance, on my own Discover page, because of the fact that I am an automotive enthusiast who likes plenty of car photos, it’s completely saturated with photos and videos of a variety of hypercars that’s worth millions of dollars, and they originated from all over the world (which I can tell by the language of the caption as well as the license plate). This is what I meant by geological barriers that are practically non-existent in today’s digital day and age. What’s more, with a click of a button, the captions are instantly translated into English with relatively high accuracy. That is to say, preceding language barriers are now being eliminated as well. Consequently, all of a sudden, users are being exposed to a much more diverse world where abundant cases of online social comparisons await.

Besides convenient accesses that cause increased social comparisons, social media also aggravates the issue by amplifying standards, particularly in terms of beauty. For instance, a study conducted by scholars at Oxford University observed that mass media (especially social media) exacerbate standards of beauty and fit by greatly affects what adolescence considers as ideal body images (Krayer, Ingledew, & Iphofen, 2007).Photos and videos of perfectly fit celebrities, models, influencers or even just their peers are widely popular and available to these teenagers (especially girls), therefore elevated standards and distorted their perceived expectations of the society regarding their appearance and more importantly, weight. This can be extremely problematic since these adolescences are being influenced by misleading conceptions, pressurized to maintain or pursue a perfect body image (typically that means unhealthily thin for girls) which can further cause health issues as they are in the rapid growth period in their life that requires a large amount of nutrition intake.

Furthermore, online social comparison is nearly impossible to avoid due to the spontaneity of people’s interactions and presentations online. Like what the author argued, as soon as the users login, they are presented with a continual stream of information (Steers, Wickham, & Acitelli, 2014). As a result, individuals are stimulated to automatically engage in social comparisons. This is the phenomenon I would argue as the inabilities to anticipate. Additionally, when messages and information are being disseminated via social media, they tend to get distorted, meaning that using only visual and audio elements, the meaning of the messages cannot be conveyed with 100% accuracy.

Take Facebook as an instance, under the “Watch” tab, it contains videos published by the fan pages or other users the main user likes. However, as soon as the user click into one of the videos, it doesn’t just zoom in but also initiate a sophisticated system of suggestions in the form of a series of continual, never-ending videos that are similar in content to the initial video user clicked on in an attempt of attracting the user for as long as possible so that their embedded advertisements can be effective. This reaffirmed what the author meant by the continual stream of information.

Moreover, one of the most substantial and salient impacts that online social comparisons have is the fact that it intrudes upon people (especially teenagers)’s identities and significantly altered and transformed the ways in which people exhibit and present their online identities and persona, pressured and compelled users to either present their identities in an inauthentic manner or even shift identities all together. However, this is not to say that users are forced to be “fake”.  Rather, it greatly affects how we present and how we choose what to present and what not to share.

For instance, the rating of popularity system popular among all social media platforms (in the form of likes, hearts, thumbs up, etc.) can be seen as the merits (or measurements of values) of social comparison. They have dramatically altered the ways in which how the majority of people present themselves. Users yield to others’ expectations and interests, emphasize on what “they” want to see more than what “I” really want to present, in favor of the gaining more endorsements of social media (i.e. likes) to fulfill our desires of being accepted and in response to social comparisons. Sometimes, this can lead to further problems such as buying more expensive stuff, going to somewhere, doing something ignorant and dangerous just for the “’Gram”.  

In the summer of 2018 Katarina Zaruskie, a 19-year-old model was bitten by a shark while posing for a series of Instagram photos in the Bahamas, and the whole process was photographed and later disseminated throughout social media (Cooper, 2018). Comparably, Jackson Coe, a 25-year-old Instagram daredevil fell to his death while attempting to take Instagram photos of himself hanging from the edge of a six-story building in New York City (Joyce, 2018). Fiona Melbul, a 27-year-old from Australia got into over $10,000 in debts after spending an astonishing six-week holiday to Disneyland, which she claimed just to impress others online.

Aside from having extremely poor judgments, what all of these incidents had in common is the fact that they were all willing to take risks because they were “doing it for the ‘Gram”. What’s more frightening is the fact that these were mere three examples among the countless instances of people suffered or even lost their lives, just in an attempt to be “picture-perfect” on social media platforms.

In other words, users are pressurized to construct and fabricate socially appealing and perfectly curated self-presentations, particularly in the wake of online social comparison with peers (Uhliur, 2016). Even though studies have revealed a positive correlation between selective positive identity representations on social media and one’s physical & mental well-being. The truth is that such effects are deceptive and insubstantial. As a matter of fact, these effects are oftentimes false and temporary. To make matters worse, the psychological gap between the ideal self and the real self has turned out to be even more saddening and often results in more notable impacts on one’s mental health.

Online social comparisons have deluged on Instagram, more than on any other platforms because it exhorts users to an anomalous level of self-disclosure, which in term as the author claimed, users would divulge more personal and sensitive information (Steers, Wickham, & Acitelli, 2014). Also, unlike Facebook, which is predominately made up of people we are acquainted with in real life such as families, friends, and colleagues; Instagram, on the other hand, allows people to follow complete strangers. Subsequently, it prompts more opportunities to conduct online social comparisons. 

Correspondingly, a new phenomenon of creating “Finsta” is extremely prominent lately. “Finsta”, or short of “Fake-Instagram” accounts, refer to a secondary and more hidden private Instagram account, typically reserved for close friends. It’s noteworthy that Instagram also rolled out the “close friend” feature similar to this that allows users to determine who has the exclusive rights to see their certain posts. However, we will discuss in depth to this official feature later on in the paper. More importantly, the Finsta phenomenon and the Close friends feature both proved just how prevalent and influential social comparisons are on Instagram. They are both the byproducts or the aftermath of the process of the fabrications of the main, socially-appealing Instagram persona.

Adolescents and adults alike are creating more and more Finstas. This is much like an emotional outlet for those who are the victims of the weary processes of creating and presenting perfectly tailored online persona. This goes to prove that users are all taking a toll as a participant. As life have up and downs, we as human beings couldn’t resist reaching out for help and support when we are experiencing hardships. Since we wouldn’t want to be deemed as weak, inferior, or fragile in front of everyone as it would generate more negativity, we rarely post anything that’s not appealing and glamorous on our public or “Real” Instagram accounts. Therefore, we turn to Finstas, where things aren’t subject to the aforementioned unrealistic standards and harsh judgements, nor are they have the burden to meet with or live up to high expectations of others. One can truly be honest and true to oneself and those around.

Challenges and Opportunities within Society

Multiple challenges that entangle the entire issue of online social comparisons. First of all, it’s much harder to perform researches on related topics and fields. This is due to the fact that it’s not only extremely difficult to gather or quantify people’s psychological feelings but also people are generally preventative towards sharing private and sensitive sides of themselves.

Secondly, the researches on such issue are exceedingly laborious and demanding, which are caused by the ever-adapting natures of CMCs. New platforms and new features are being released at an incredible pace, and it’s virtually impossible to keep up. Moreover, the sheer scale of the contents being uploaded to these platforms present tremendous complications for gathering, examining and analyzing them.

Nonetheless, there are still some positive values associated with the issue of identity. Namely, it entitles people with the capital to experiment with identities. For instance, as the author argued, in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games particularly, one can achieve the goal of presenting themselves however they wanted to through dematerializations and re-embodiment. Like I mentioned in the historical trajectory section, researchers who conducted studies on MMORPG users have maintained that such digital reality does make for crucial context for one’s experimental grounds for identities to certain limits (Pinto et al., 2015).

Moreover, some other potential opportunities are being brought into light by discussing the issues. As the works of Danah Boyd demonstrated, the constructing of digital embodiments or online identities necessitates the individual’s active input (Boyd, 2010). Such inputs always stem from one’s articulated real-life experiences, connections, and relationships with broader society. With that being said, even though as my preceding illustrations argued: online social comparisons have coerced people towards constructing more deliberate forging of identities; by ways of active constructions, individuals are rewarded by the chances to reflect upon themselves and also learn about their presence in real life. Thus, to a certain extent, the problematic processes of perfecting online persona is assisting one to identify and even solidify their existing “offline” identity.

Take the popular professional social networking site of LinkedIn as an example, users engage with online identity fabrications when they first decided to use the platform to brand themselves in their respective professional fields. However, LinkedIn also represented the opportunity for users to positively solidify their offline persona.

To give an example, when constructing a LinkedIn profile, one must come up with a considerable amount of details that narrate their professional life in the forms of a short biography of their current positions, lists of previous work experiences, educations, skills, endorsements, various accomplishes and awards. All of these data entries call for the users to reminisce about their past experiences and more importantly, the vital components that constitute their identities. In parallel, when users made the conscious choice of leaving out certain information or retouch upon their experiences, they are simultaneously gaining an understanding of their self-representations in real life.

 Another example that endorses the point is students, as they often attend various networking events where they converse with working professionals. Following up to that conversation, it’s common for students to ask if others want to “connect” on LinkedIn, in an attempt to present a more polished version of themselves. By doing so, users of LinkedIn, in this case, the students have effectively consolidated their real-life identity through the supplements of their constructed online identity on LinkedIn.

The commodification of identity is also another opportunity elicited by the issue of online identity. More specifically, it’s what Vrabec and Odziomkova argued as the thriving form of public relations of Online Identity Management (Vrabec, Odziomkova, 2018).The prosperous digital sphere means that companies wouldn’t want to miss out on lucrative opportunities. At the same time, however, they must first survive the harsh, ever-changing virtual environment by quickly adopting appropriate strategies. One of the most vital ones is the idea of organizing and managing the company’s online identity, primarily done through social media. Luckily, this presented opportunities for PR specialists and media management experts.

For instance, Wendy’s Twitter account is perhaps the most successful case with many others imitating. Unlike typical company/organizations’ twitter page, which is oversaturated with monotonous and apathetic advertisements or announcements; Wendy’s online persona is much more intimate and affectionate. It’s so incredibly interactive as if it’s a personal friend of yours. Even though it’s a brand’s official twitter account, it acts, talks and interacts just as a human being, it has triumphant in perfectly constructing its online persona, which in term boosted the business itself. Thus, online identity management, whether for businesses or influencers/celebrities, present another opportunity in the wake of the issue of online identity.

Likewise, there are favorable circumstances of online social comparisons as well. For instance, a recent study containing four studies proclaimed that upward social comparisons can generate benign envy, which in term greatly simulates and motivates people to improve upon themselves. More specifically, as the author pointed out, the appraisal between benign envy and malicious envy is mainly associated with the perceived deservedness (Ven, Zeelenberg, & Pieters, 2009). For instance, if I saw on Instagram that my friend, whom I considered to be a worse candidate for a position than I am, just got an internship offer, this would trigger me to feel benignly envious and then admire him/her as for why can he/she achieve such things and consequently positively influence and inspire me to improve. Furthermore, even though we are unwilling to admit it, downward social comparisons do elicit overwhelming positive effects. It endorses our endeavors and achievements and gives us the feeling of being superior.

Personal Stance and Thoughts

In my opinion, as a graduate student studying digital social media, I would like to accentuate that even though all of the above are solid, concrete issues that are exacerbated by social media, I am still truly optimistic about the future of social media, for the issues of social comparisons and identity crisis existed among us long before the Internet was invented. Thus, it would be putting the cart before the horse if we were to blame social media for everything. We shouldn’t have any prejudice against social media as the issues were preexisting. It is such a wonderfully versatile apparatus that deserve us to devote time and effort into mastering. Be that as it may, we must not let its poisonous aspects terrify, delude and manipulate us. We must all be alert to the issues of online social comparisons and digitalized identity/persona because of the inevitability of them. As participants of the digital ecosystem to varying degrees, we are all exposed to the potential risks. 

In considerations of the foregoing, there are several courses of action or strategies that can be extremely valuable for one good digital citizen to keep in mind in order to confront and cope with the issues. First, one must always recognize and realize the fact that things people present online don’t equal to the entirety of reality. Resembles in television or films, all the contents online are carefully selected and certainly manipulated, and they do so for specific purposes (in the case of social media, the reason might be attempting to fight internal struggles or simply to show off). In other words, we must first learn to question and doubt the verisimilitude of all the things being represented or we encounter online. If we fail to recognize such a simple and straightforward point, we will be no different nor better than the prisoners in Socrate’s allegory of the cave, mistaken false beliefs and illusive perceptions of limited representations of the superficial truth (shadows on the wall) for the Truth itself. By the same token, we must avoid considering what’s on social media or what we perceived on social media as what’s reality and fall into unfavorable social comparisons.

What’s more, we must lessen and minimize (reduce but not eliminate) channels of noises and resonance that might trigger social comparisons, although that it’s such a psychological impulse to compare. More specifically, we might want to keep favorable, benign social comparisons opportunities that stimulate us. An adequate approach is to unfollow those who constantly trigger ourselves to do upward social comparisons, most likely due to misleading perceived similarities. Hence, we must go through those we follow on social media, carefully scrutinize and get rid of those who don’t have comparable standards to us.

A relevant instance happened in the process of writing this paper: Instagram officially removed the feature known as “Following Activity”, which allowed users to see what contents people they followed liked/commented on Instagram. I think this is definitely a step in the right direction as to minimizing channels of social comparison as now we exempted from yet another means of knowing the trends among our friends.

In combating ill-advised online social comparisons, one must also learn to accept his/her imperfections and know that it is perfectly okay and normal to show our vulnerability and reach out for help. As I mentioned before, the close friend feature introduced by Instagram is one good illustration of an endeavor of reaching out for help through showing one’s fragile or emotional side to a pre-selected group of whom we deemed to be close and would offer help if necessary. Or as I pointed out before, Finsta despite is clearly a byproduct of the process of perfecting online persona and social comparisons, it shouldn’t stop us from utilizing it as an emotional outlet. On it, we can do whatever we want with it (long as it follows the community guidelines and rules of Instagram and common decency, of course).

Besides, yet another way to stay grounded is to cling to the right reality. Don’t be tricked by illusions of popularity and such, don’t let social media twist our relationships with reality.

Ever since the explosive proliferation of a series of online platforms (among which social media or SNSs are the most pervasive and prominent), the digital sphere has deeply embedded in and intertwined with our life. Some might doubt that we have become all too addicted to it. But the truth is that the partition between the two spheres blurred. It all happened so rapidly in such an unpredictable manner that many of us were overwhelmed and even began to reject it to various levels. Nonetheless, as eminent scholars in the field---Sherry Turkle and Danah Boyd pointed out, it’s all too easy to declare that nothing is the same anymore, former theories and practices have all become irrelevant and useless (Boyd, 2010). As a matter of fact, it appears so that the general public doesn’t even try to make sense of all this anymore. Luckily, scholarships from both academia and almost all industry are very intrigued and fascinated by the digital ecosystem as a whole, and are constantly developing researches to ascertain the true affordance and reach of the components of digital ecosystem such as social media.

All things considered, it is extremely vital for us to take some time and take a step back to study, investigate and examine the issues of online social comparisons and its impacts on users’ online identity fabrication and presentation, within the framework of the digital ecosystem. In this paper, I have enunciated that online social comparisons constrain people to forge and manufacture perfectly curated online persona. I then revealed the challenges and difficulties and caused the insufficient number of researches in the respective topic, followed by unveiling some of the opportunities in regard to the issues that we can all utilize. Finally, I proposed a variety of approaches one can adopt in order to resist the issue and its impacts.

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