Social Media Users

Everyone knows that you usually can’t trust people on the internet to be who they say they are. There are many stereotypes. For example, there are the people on dating sites that pretend to be 20 years younger and several times more attractive than they actually are. Another example are social network sites. As many businesses have begun to check Facebook pages to appraise potential employees, people are encouraged to maintain both a casual page, for friends and family, and a social page, in which they present a respectable face. This has led to people creating two different personalities: a wild party animal paired with a calm , upstanding young man. The internet encourages Albert Bandura’s model of agency, which states, “people’s belief about their capabilities to exercise control over events that affect their lives” (pg.136). This applies to the internet, in that total anonymity allows them to form a new identity in which they can gain the good opinion of other people. They often try to be, in the words of Coleman, “cooler than life” (pg. 125).