There is a lot of discourse right now about the overbearing effect of social media on our self-identities, and whether that influence is healthy. The argument is that the algorithms behind social media feeds exert consumeristic pressures on our preferences and behaviours, hijacking our ability to discover our internal selves.
I have doubts about this argument, or at least its framing. Social media is effective at influencing us because we are social creatures, evolved to be influenced. A decade ago, before social media, trends were set by TV, radio, and magazines. Even if you weren’t directly influenced by them, someone in your social proximity was. A friend, sibling, parent, or colleague then passed it along to you. Going back further still, dress and taste were often determined by those of royal standing. This is actually a feature of human behaviour: it defines in-groups and out-groups, which in turn tends to promote safety and survival.
The critical distinction between how we were influenced in the past and how we are influenced today is not the presence of influence, but its pace and the degree of agency we have in assimilating that influence into our behaviour.
Slower, more personal recommendations allow time for a trend to develop within you, on your own terms. Rather than an algorithm pushing a new playlist at you every day, you might spend three months listening to an album front to back. The album becomes connected to that particular era of your life. Its music, lyrics, and emotion become deeply ingrained in who you were, and thus who you are. Listening to that album again a decade later might transport you back to that time, its memories, and that person you once were. That is how a deep sense of identity forms in a healthy way, rather than through the shallow, rapid churn of algorithmically-driven consumption which refuses to provide time for development and integration.
Connections
Self-Discovery Requires Dialogue With The World
Link Explanation: The argument that being influenced by something, forbids the opportunity to discover who we are is nonsense. Per the linked note, the process of self-discovery occurs through modes of expression (art, language, style). None of these are innate to our existence. They are introduced to us through interaction with others and the natural world. Self-discovery therefore requires being influenced, not isolation.
Finding Yourself Requires Creation
Link Explanation: We do not discover ourselves, like a 17th century explorer might find new lands. We make ourselves through our actions. We cannot just passively consume and expect to find a complex Being in the haystack, we must explore ways of self expression which enables new ways of existing and thus allow us to choose who we are.
Reference
�Your Phone Is the Reason You Have No Identity