The Youth of Today

Our young generation of today has both good qualities and some
deficiencies in them. This generation has a series of understandings and emotions that
the previous generations did not possess and therefore, we must always give them the benefit of
the doubt.
At the same time, they also have some corrupt thoughts and negative ethical traits which
must be removed from their character. It is not possible to remove these traits from them without
keeping in mind and respecting the good qualities that the youth possess – meaning their
understandings, emotions and their other noble traits and qualities – thus, we must show respect to
them in these regards.
Today, the people are able to see the entire world and the advancements that the world has
made. They see the knowledge of the world; they see the economic powers around the world; they
see the political and military powers of the world; they can see the Democracies of the world; they
see the equality that is taking shape around the world; they see the various movements, uprisings
and revolutions taking place in the world.
No matter how one characterizes the new landscape of identity formation, it remains clear
that the context has changed and the process has become more complicated, if not dangerous.
The Development of the Digital Self
The idea of the digital self-developed from the original phenomenon of the ‘extended self’,
pioneered by Russell Belk in 1988. He believed our possessions are a major contributor to and
reflection of our identities. Back in the day, it was external objects, such as clothes, jewellery and
cars etc. that he believed we used and considered as part of ourselves. Think about it, could you
live without your smartphone or laptop? (Be honest…)
Nowadays however, it isn’t merely tangible belongings that researchers consider as part of
our extended self. Our digital possessions such as photos, videos, statuses, texts, and emails are
now seen to be significantly important to shaping our digital self.
Why do we have a Digital Self?
The idea of the Digital Self is an interesting and relatively new topic discussed in consumer
behavior research. Researchers, such as Stone (1996) and Hemetsburger (2005) claim that the
digital web allows us to try out different personas that differ from our real life identities. But why
would we want to even do this? We were especially interested in looking at why we express
ourselves online the way we do and we wanted to share the most common reasons:
 We want to meet the expectation of others: research shows over 50% of women would edit
their social media photos to look better and meet the expectations that the media and
magazines have set.
 We want to boost our self-esteem: people upload photos and statuses online that they feel
will receive ‘likes’ and positive feedback in which ultimately helps their egos.
 To feel a sense of belonging: Some of us want to fit in with the crowd and upload things that
are ‘down with the trend’ - for instance, who notices the amount of people posting pictures of
their food increasing? It didn’t come from nowhere.
 Bigger sense of freedom: Unlike real life, digital platforms allow us to express ourselves in
any way we want to without anyone there to physically judge us.
 Striving to be our ideal selves: Digital Apps, such as Face tune, that allow us to improve our
appearances on photos (through teeth whitening, skin smoothing and body shape editing)
helps consumers to express as their ‘ideal’ self-online and inevitably feel better about
themselves
In conclusion, the digital world has provided us with greater opportunities to express our identity
in any form we want to. But what we all need to remember is: how will we feel if we go so far to
express ourselves differently online that we forget what reality is, or worse, we end up resenting it?
Education and learning in a digital world
The idea that digital connectivity could transform education has attracted global interest and
opened up new possibilities, as development organizations, commercial software and hardware
producers and educational institutions develop, pilot and try to scale up new digital products and
services in the education sector. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are already
expanding access to high-quality educational content, including textbooks, video material and
remote instruction, and at a much lower cost than in the past. They can potentially increase student
motivation by making learning more fun and relatable. And they create opportunities for
personalized learning, helping students to learn at their own pace and helping educators with
limited resources provide students with better learning opportunities. How well are digital
technologies fulfilling this promise? Without question, they have opened access to learning
opportunities for children around the world, especially those in remote regions. They have allowed
children to participate in e-learning and to access a wide range of educational and learning content
that was unavailable to previous generations of children.
By contrast, adolescents, are often exposed to a wider range of risks from abusers outside
the family, including from offenders in the digital sphere. In El Salvador, a girl who was sexually
exploited online at age 14 – not by a stranger but by her ex-boyfriend – explained that he asked for
pictures of her “without a lot of clothes on or with no clothes at all,” she said. “That made me more
uncomfortable.” After she broke up with him a few months later, he created a social media profile
with her nude photos. “When I got the friend request … I felt my world crumbling. He’d sent friend
requests to all my friends, to my mother, to my sister.” When the profile was made public, she went
to the police. “They said it was my fault because I had sent the pictures.” After the incident, she said,
“I felt abused. I felt really hurt. He didn’t get any punishment at all.” She hopes that other children
can learn from her experience: “I decided to tell my story to help other girls so this doesn’t happen
to them.”
Identity Formation in a Digital Age
One of the hallmarks of identity formation for Millennials growing up in a digital age, as we
have already seen, is its fluidity. Scholars like Zygmunt Bauman and David Buckingham have
suggested that, unlike the way in which identity was understood or formed in the pre-digital age,
Digital Natives engage a personal (and perhaps even a collective) identity that is “almost infinitely
negotiable.”9 As Buckingham has noted elsewhere, this fluidity or negotiability is ostensibly positive
and negative, carrying with it both advantageous and problematic implications. On the positive side,
such fluidity offers a seeming freedom that young people may have never known in a previous era.
This freedom to “explore one’s self” is heightened by the speed of communication and the sharing
of ideas, cultures and experiences across the normative borders of society and language. On the
negative side, such fluidity presents an omnipresent challenge of instability, uncertainty and
confusion in terms of one’s ability to relate to one’s self, others and, ultimately, God.
It has become increasingly clear that there is value and healing in incorporating into our
understanding of human development an imagination of becoming at home. A part of becoming at
home in the universe is discovering our place within it, in the new global commons in which we now
find ourselves. We are beginning to recognize that this becoming is not so much a matter of leaving
home as it is undergoing a series of transformations in the meaning of home. We grow and become
both by letting go and holding on, leaving and staying, journeying and abiding – whether we are
speaking geographically, socially, intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually. A good life and the
cultivation of wisdom require a balance of home and pilgrimage.10 The metaphor of becoming “at
home” in one’s life does not lend much credence to the notion that young adults can fabricate or
develop a personal identity through social media, technology or self-machination.
The Digital Self: How Social Media Serves as a Setting that Shapes Youth’s Emotional
Experiences
There are several ways in which individuals stay connected with one another, including social
media. Research with college students indicates that the greatest reason for social media use is
social need (Wang et al. 2012). Aside from cellular phones, people can remain socially connected
via social networking sites (SNSs). Facebook is a highly popular website for youth, second only
to YouTube.
When accessing social media, one of the most common online activities (reported by 52 %
of youth) is using SNSs to post one’s own or to read someone else’s messages. It has been well
documented that adolescents commonly use the Internet for social purposes (Reich et al. 2012).
Social media has been implicated as one reason for the evolution of the very concept of
friendship. Johnson and Becker (2011) summarize how friendship, once conceptualized by
researchers as a “fragile” relationship, might now better be conceptualized as a “flexible”
relationship. They argue that computer-mediated communication (CMC) has contributed to
friendships being more “elastic” and prone to changes over time.
The Positive Impact of Social Media
There are several known positive consequences for young people who engage regularly with
social media. Benefits include the enhancement of social contact, independence, and
communication (Ito et al. 2008) as well as a sense of emotional connection with others
(Reich 2010). Valkenburg and Peter (2007c) reported that preadolescents and adolescents interact
online mainly to remain connected with their existing friends (88 %) (see also Creasy 2013; Pempek
et al. 2009). Additionally, preadolescents and adolescents who communicate with friends on the
Internet feel closer to their existing friends (Valkenburg and Peter 2007c). In fact, Yang and Brown
(2013) found that self-reported levels of loneliness are lower and that social adjustment is higher for
late adolescents who use Facebook in order to maintain relationships while transitioning to college.
Similarly, some report that college students’ loneliness decreases with increased Facebook use
(Lou et al. 2012). Jordán-Conde et al. (2014) found that late adolescents frequently use Facebook to
communicate intimate topics with their friends, although adolescent populations do not appear to
use Facebook to form romantic relationships (Moreau et al. 2012). Moreover, Valkenburg and Peter
(2009a) formulated “the Internet enhanced self-disclosure hypothesis,” which argues that increased
social connectedness and well-being, which are often experienced by adolescents via using the
Internet, results from heightened self-disclosure.
Aside from the social benefits, the potential educational benefits of social media should not
be forgotten. Public health organizations have published data on successful use of social media as
a way of reaching their target populations (e.g., Kornfield et al. 2015). Particularly for younger
children, there is evidence that “safe and secure online communication” can teach understanding of
and positive attitudes towards other cultures and foster learning about the world and multiculturalism
(Hou et al. 2015).
The Negative Impact of Social Media
Despite the documented positive aspects of social media use, data regarding their negative
effects is accumulating. Fox and Moreland (2015) suggest that research to date may have
underestimated the negative effects of social media use because researchers are asking the wrong
questions and missing out on more ephemeral, hard-to-quantify findings. Nonetheless, several
recent findings suggest that there may be negative effects of social media on youth. Steeves (2014)
found that creative uses of social media (e.g., homemade videos, sharing artwork) are uncommon
on a daily or weekly basis (4–9 %) and that social media is typically used for communication with
friends and entertainment consumption (e.g., online games at 59 %). Additionally, many adolescents
report negative relational experiences via social media. For example, adolescents experience online
meanness and bullying (“cyber-bullying”) (52 %), misunderstandings (7 %), unwanted contact
(23 %), and unintentional disclosure (17 %) while using social networking websites (Christofides et
al. 2012). Although youth predominantly communicate with their existing friends online, adolescents
are more likely than adults to add “friends” to Facebook who they do not know or like (Christofides
et al. 2011).
Much of the research on the negative consequences of social media use has focused on
depressed affect. For example, it has been reported that troubled adolescents (i.e., those
experiencing victimization and depression) form closer online relationships than other adolescents,
which suggests that online relationships may attract more socially and emotionally vulnerable
adolescents (Wolak et al. 2003). It has also been shown that, for college students, approximately
one third express mild depressive symptom references on Facebook (Moreno et al. 2011) and
that Facebook use has a negative impact on their cognitive and emotional well-being (Kross et
al. 2013). While Jelenchick et al. (2013) reported that there is no association between depression
and Facebook use, Cooper (2006) reported that ineffectiveness, a self-reported measure of
depressive symptomatology, is related to Internet use in childhood, but these results were
correlational and as such do not suggest patterns of causality. Morgan and Cotten (2003) reported
that the impact of Internet use on depression differs depending on the activity that one engages in.
For example, college students who use the Internet for communication via instant messaging and
chat rooms experience a decrease in depressive symptoms, whereas depressive symptoms
increase when the Internet is used for other purposes (e.g., shopping).
There is also a phenomenon called “Facebook depression”. “Facebook depression”
describes a situation where individuals become depressed due to Facebook use (Jelenchick et
al. 2013) or, due to being rewarded with attention from close others when they post depressive
status updates, wherein individuals’ online personas may appear to be depressed even when the
individual is not (Moreno et al. 2011). Mixed findings have been reported on this subject; currently,
the literature does not suggest that Facebook use per se predisposes individuals to become
depressed but it may be that some individuals are more at risk when faced with this particular stress.
Young people can also be at an increased risk for a host of issues while using the Internet,
likely due in part to their limited self-regulation and susceptibility to pressure from peers (O’Keeffe
and Clarke-Pearson 2011). Facebook use has been related to jealousy in college students, which
is potentially due to the availability of ambiguous personal information about one’s romantic partner
(Muise et al. 2009), and also hinders recovery following a breakup (Marshall 2012).
Identity Formation and Self-Presentation
Sullivan (1953), a prominent interpersonal relationships theorist, believed that
preadolescence is a crucial time for personality development of the individual and is also a time
when youth begin to care for the needs of others as opposed to simply thinking of themselves.
Similarly, Erikson (1959) proposed that adolescence is the developmental period where identity
becomes the primary concern. It is also widely understood within the developmental literature that
adolescence is a period when youth aim to foster their own autonomy via their identity creation,
sexuality, and interpersonal intimacy (e.g., Valkenburg and Peter 2011).
Valkenburg and Peter (2011) argue that youth develop both self-presentation and self-
disclosure skills in order to cultivate their personal autonomy, while Jordán-Conde et al. (2014)
suggest that Facebook is a place where late adolescents experiment with their identity as their
identities are not yet fixed. Moreover, they go on to state that the Internet provides: (1) anonymity
of one’s identity (e.g., in chat rooms) and audiovisual anonymity (i.e., reduced visual or auditory
cues that may be overwhelming), (2) asynchronicity (e.g., one can change what they were going to
write), and (3) accessibility (e.g., large opportunities to share information). All of these factors are
particularly important for preadolescents and adolescents, who may be especially self-conscious at
this stage in their live

References:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40894-015-0014-8
https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_2017_ENG_WEB.pdf
https://sensum.co/blog/the-digital-self-why-do-we-express-ourselves-on-social-media-like-we-do