R4: Postmodernism and Social Media

I understand postmodernism to be a philosophy that encourages individuality. It promotes people to be skeptical of absolutes, and places a focus on interpretation. Individuality is a trait that is highly valued in today’s society and postmodernism is easily seen in the way social media is utilized.

Social media allows a person to become someone else, to shape their own reality. People can be adventurous on social media. There is nothing stopping someone from being themselves online, but they don’t have to be the person they are in real life. An individual can be multiple people online, and use all those separate identities to build up parts of themselves. As Sherry Turkle puts it, “Many more people experience identity as a set of roles that can be mixed and matched, whose diverse demands need to be negotiated.” Life, in postmodern times, is not as black and white as it used to be.

A postmodern perspective on social media reveals its importance in identity formation. People can discover different aspects about themselves and explore new ideas across different websites. They pick and choose how they should portray themselves on multiple different sites so that they appeal to as many people as possible. People are constantly trying to reach out to others, to “retribalize,” and that is most easily accomplished through balancing multiple roles on social media.

Postmodernism’s influence is seen in the way “people are able to build a self by cycling through many selves.” (Turkle) Each piece is part of the whole person. No two people will portray themselves the exact same way across all platforms. By having many separate personas, a person can showcase their own individuality. 

Turkle, Sherry, “Aspects of the Self” Chapter 7. Life on the Screen, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1997.