How Online Social Media Persona Affects Personal Identity and Self

Through empirical means and introspection, this paper deals with the question: What does it take for a person to persist from moment to moment, for the same person to exist at different moments? The argument being made is that our online social media persona is one and the same with our personal identity. This paper touches on theories of continuity of body / substance and continuity of consciousness and how they are related to social networking sites. This paper offers discourse on the empirical means taken, discussing the various means of social media / social networking sites, particularly YouTube, in the greater context of personal identity. Most everybody has some form of online presence. Our online social media persona affects our personal identity and self by becoming one and the same with one another. The ability to show them off on the internet is no different than a book about one’s life. Through our online composition, we can see what it means to persist from moment to moment and exist at different times