November 19, 2008

Washington, (ANI): The popularity of social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace has led students to create idealized versions of themselves for their thousands of friends, say UCLA psychologists.

The researchers have claimed that the youngsters are using their virtual self to explore their emerging identities.

The study, based on small focus groups with a total of 11 women and 12 men, all UCLA students who use MySpace frequently, also revealed that parents often understand very little about this phenomenon.

"People can use these sites to explore who they are by posting particular images, pictures or text. You can manifest your ideal self," said UCLA psychology graduate student Adriana Manago, a researcher with the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles (CDMCLA), and lead author of a study.

Manago said that such websites allow the youngsters to manifest who they want to be and then try to grow into that.

Manago added: "We're always engaging in self-presentation; we're always trying to put our best foot forward. Social networking sites take this to a whole new level. You can change what you look like, you can Photoshop your face, you can select only the pictures that show you in a perfect lighting. These websites intensify the ability to present yourself in a positive light and explore different aspects of your personality and how you present yourself.

"You can try on different things, possible identities, and explore in a way that is common for emerging adulthood. It becomes psychologically real. People put up something that they would like to become - not completely different from who they are but maybe a little different - and the more it gets reflected off of others, the more it may be integrated into their sense of self as they share words and photos with so many people."

"People are living life online. Social networking sites are a tool for self-development," said Manago's co-author Patricia Greenfield.

The websites have users opening free accounts communicating with other tens of millions users on Facebook and MySpace. The website allow the users to select "friends" and share photos, videos and information about themselves - such as whether they are currently in a relationship - with these friends.

A large number of students have 1,000 or more friends on Facebook or MySpace. The researchers said that the identity, romantic relations and sexuality all get played out on these social networking sites.

Greenfield said: "All of these things are what teenagers always do, but the social networking sites give them much more power to do it in a more extreme way. In the arena of identity formation, this makes people more individualistic and more narcissistic; people sculpt themselves with their profiles. In the arena of peer relations, I worry that the meaning of 'friends' has been so altered that real friends are not going to be recognized as such. How many of your 1,000 'friends' do you see in person? How many are just distant acquaintances? How many have you never met?"

"Instead of connecting with friends with whom you have close ties for the sake of the exchange itself, people interact with their 'friends' as a performance, as if on a stage before an audience of people on the network," said Manago.

"These social networking sites have a virtual audience, and people perform in front of their audience. You're a little detached from them. It's an opportunity to try different things out and see what kind of comments you get," said Michael Graham, a former UCLA undergraduate psychology student who worked on this study with Greenfield and Manago for his honor's thesis.

The study appears in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. (ANI)