By Ryan Morley
My own online presence is essential to my identity, as I spend a fair chunk of my day online in some form or another. My online identity shows who I am, the things I share, like, watch and write can give anyone a decent idea about me as a person. Arguably the most important aspect of this online identity is the profile picture, as it is the first thing anyone sees when they come across your profile. So, the use of an appropriate profile picture is paramount in the creation of your own online identity.
I myself do not interact a whole lot with my public social media profiles. In terms of uploading photos to Instagram or Facebook, or updating profile pictures, or even posting a status update, I am almost never engaging in them. I prefer to use the platforms for my own personal use, such as messaging friends, looking at what other people are up to, following my favourite actors, musicians etc. This is why my Facebook profile picture is almost 5 years old now and well overdue for an update. I don’t have the need or desire to update it regularly, as I don’t need the exposure and likes that updating it would bring. The use of a profile picture differs between genders, races, cultures and ages. For example, my youngest sister would changer her profile picture on Instagram at least once a month, in order to keep it fresh and show that she is still keeping up with the times. Whereas I haven’t changed mine on Instagram since I first created my account. A study by Wenzhi Zheng, Chih-HungYuan, Wei-Hung Chang and Yen-Chun Jim Wu (2016) explores these differences in the choice of profile pictures and the motivations behind them by Chinese students, Taiwanese students, and International students.
They found that the common motivations between men and women were both mainly to look attractive. The picture category of “user posing alone” has the highest percentage in both genders. Users choosing to pose alone in their profile picture are associated with being self-confident (Kaya and Bicen, 2016, Strano, 2008). Tobi, Ma’on, and Ghazali (2013) also suggested that the use of social network can build user confidence.
Relating that back to me, my profile picture is me with a couple of mates from school, which is what a lot of guys around my age tend to have. That and sporting pictures (which is my other go to). The study shoes that guys were more likely to choose a certain profile picture to show that they like having fun than girls, who were more likely to select a picture because of a special moment or to show interests. I select my profile pictures based on showing my interests and what I’m good at, and showing that I have some close mates.
Im apart of many online communities, such as: Facebook pages, forums, YouTube channels, Twitter, Movie/TV franchises/Actors Facebook pages, fan theories, YouTube channels, Music/Musicians Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud, Sporting/Sports peoples Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Fantasy Sports Communities and so on.
I am usually quite invested in these online communities, so they impact a fair bit on my identity. A lot of my opinions and world views can be shaped by these communities. These communities are good because they allow me to look at and interact with people with similar interests as me and opens my mind to new ideas and concepts.
For all of these forums where I am mostly interacting with random people, I tend to go for a more private profile picture. Something that doesn’t give away my own personal identity, and I kind of build my own, different personality to my usual online one.
My first tweet shown below was a big step in creating my own professional online identity.
Howdy! Go check out my https://t.co/QpTlnDn8zL page! https://t.co/3Ubxsejrg0 #ALM101— Ryan Morley (@morlrya1) March 6, 2019
Reference:
Zheng W, Yuan C, Chang WH, Jim Wu YC, 2016, ‘Profile pictures on social media: Gender and regional differences’, Computers in Human Behavior
Volume 63, October 2016, Pages 891-898
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