A Real Virtual Self

Adolescence is a point at which young people are seeking answers to the questions: “Who am I?” and “How do I show up in the world?”, and social media is playing an increasingly integral part. Rather than social media being seen to facilitate realness, often users are criticised for being fake and self-absorbed, inhabiting an online world in which there is a pervasive narrative of that which is unreal (Gardner & Davies, The app generation. Yale University Press, 2014; Turkle, Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books, 2012). However, adolescence is a time of flux with young people moving between childlike states and more adult versions of themselves, and back again (Grosz, Becomings: Explorations in time, memory, and futures. Cornell University Press, 1999; Parallax, 11(2), 4–13, 2005). While younger children frequently exist unjudged, moving between imaginary play spaces and real-world happenings, experiencing a version of reality within them both, for a teenager within the context of self-presentation on social media, this seems to be problematised. Conversely, this chapter argues that there is merit in foregrounding the childlike moments of adolescent behaviour to reframe perceptions of their online self-presentation. Pretend play, storytelling, and “as if” afford users space to make-believe, and as a result, these can serve to scaffold the move to more grown-up moments of adolescent self, in just the same way they do for the developing child. As a result, this chapter relocates discussion to focus upon the role of play, imagination, and stories within healthy (child) development. Drawing upon educationalists and philosophers ranging from Vygotsky to Sartre, this chapter argues that Social Networking Sites offer many a different and productive way of engaging with their world. The goal of the chapter is to sensitise more than convince, in order that our understanding of young people’s online behaviour is open to more flexible, less consistently negative interpretations. The aim is to provide a more complex view of the relationship adolescents have with their social media accounts.