Understanding the Self

2. Construct four sentences that should start with
“I am ____________”. Three of the four sentences
should be true about yourself. You can talk about
your characteristics, strengths, weaknesses,
accomplishments, personalities, and behavior. One
statement should be a lie-something that you just
made up about yourself.
1. I am ____________________________.
2. I am ____________________________.
3. I am ____________________________.
4. I am ____________________________.

4. These days, more people are
becoming active in using the Internet
for research, pleasure, business,
communication, and other purposes.
Indeed, the Internet is of great help for
everyone. On the other hand, people
assume different identities while in the
cyberspace. People act differently when
they are online and offline. We have
our real identity and online identity.

5. It has only been 25 years since Tim Berners-Lee made
the World Wide Web available to the public, but in that time,
the Internet has already become an integral part of everyday
life for most of the world’s population.
• Almost two-thirds of the world’s population now has a
mobile phone. https://www.worldometers.info/world-
population/
• More than half of the world’s web traffic now comes
from mobile phones.
• More than half of all mobile connections around the
world are now “broadband”.
• More than one in five of the world’s population shopped
online in the past 30 days.
Media users in the Philippines grew by 12 million 0r
25% while the number of mobile users increased by 13
million or 32%.

7. Online Identity
- is actually the sum of all our characteristics and our
interactions.
Partial Identity
- is a subset of characteristics that make up our identity.
Meanwhile, persona is the partial identity we create that
represents ourselves in a specific situation.

8. According to Goffman (1959) and Leary (1995),
self- presentation is the “process of controlling how one
is perceived by other people” and is the key to
relationship, inception and development.
Anything posted online should be considered
“public” no matter what our “privacy” settings are.
• Personal Identity
- is the interpersonal level of self which
differentiates the individual as unique from others
• Social Identity
- is the level of self whereby the individual is
identified by his or her group membership.

9. Belk (2013) explained that sharing ourselves is no
longer practiced as soon as human beings were formed.
Digital devices help us share information broadly, more
than ever before.
Schwarz (2010) mentioned, we have entered an
extraordinary era of self-portraiture.
Social media applications are now a key part of
self-presentation for one sixth of humanity. As a result,
researchers and participants become concerned with
actively managing identity and reputation and to warn
against the phenomenon of “oversharing”.
Many teenagers, as well as some adults, share even
more intimate details with their partners like their
passwords. This could be an ultimate act of intimacy
and trust or the ultimate expression of paranoia and
distrust with the partner.

10. “Fear of missing out”
- a condition where people would like to remain
updated and they keep on sharing themselves online because
it adds a sense of confidence at their end especially if others
like and share their posts.
“Disinhibition Effect”
- the lack of face-to-face gaze-meeting, together with
feelings of anonymity and invisibility, gives people the
freedom for self-disclosure but can also “flame” others and
may cause conflict sometimes. The resulting disinhibition
causes people to believe that they are able to express their
“true self” better online than they ever could in face-to-face
contexts.
However, it does not mean that there is a fixed “true
self”, the self is still at work in progress and we keep on
improving and developing ourselves every single day.

11. • In addition to sharing the good things we
experience, many of us also share the bad,
embarrassing, and sinful things we experience.
• We also react and comment on negative
experiences of others, and we also argue with others
online.
• Relationships may be made stronger or broken
through posts online.
According to Foucault (1998), confession, along
with contemplation, self-examination, learning,
reading, and writing self-critical letters to friends,
are a part of the “technologies of the self” through
which we seek to purge and cleanse ourselves.

12. Consequently, we should have a filtering
system to whatever information we share online, as
well as to what information we believe in, which are
being shared or posted by others online.
We should look at online information carefully
whether they are valid and true before believing and
promoting them.
In the same way, we should also think well
before we post or share anything online in order to
prevent conflict, arguments, and cyberbullying, and
to preserve our relationships with others.