Personality on Social Media: Online vs. Offline Identity

Having more control over online presentation than face-to-face communication, individuals present themselves differently online than in real-life situations. Self-presentation motivates a social media user to change their personality to make favorable impressions on their audience or to have an appealing idealized self (Kramer & Winter, 2008). Users edit posts and create “picture-perfect” photos as a way for them to gain positive feedback, so instead of revealing their true personality and physical looks, they are polishing themselves to gain affirmations (Kramer & Winter, 2008). This study hypothesized that extraverted and open personalities are more likely to present themselves similarly in real-life to how they do online, and neurotic and introverted personalities have different self-presentations online versus offline. A total of 30 participants who were active users of at least one social media platform were sent an online survey that consisted of personality questions and reasoning for social media usage. The Big Five Personality Traits (BFI-2; Soto, & John, 2017) and the Social Media Self-Presentation Scale (Yang et al., 2017) were used to measure offline personality and tendency to present oneself differently online than in person. Results are expected to demonstrate that extraverted and open people form online personalities that are true to real-life identities, whereas introverted and neurotic people curate ideal online personalities to counteract their true identities. These results have implications for identity development, as social media impacts the social life and communication of this generation