Something I often find amusing is how much media effects are simultaneously overrated and underrated. Social media critics have done poorly at establishing and defending linkages between social media use and mental health outcomes. However, I’ve often felt that we underestimate the long-run effect of social media usage on how we think about other people and the world around us.

Flattening identity

I don’t really need to tell you how much Twitter has influenced various aspects of American politics and society. Chances are, you may already be there if you’re reading this. 1 Twitter exemplifies something common to social media writ large — the flattening of identity. We all use naive models of the world to make sense of it, and a subtle effect of social media usage may eventually be the spread of the folk model of identity it encourages.

Social media forces the user to own a single, uniform, and constantly observable persona and bluntly urges oversharing to enhance perceived authenticity. Similarly, what would otherwise be localized scenes are absorbed into one big fishbowl-shaped theater. 2 The result is an strange mixture of soap opera, reality TV, and pro wrestling. The more public you are, the more you become one of many “characters.” 3

Inevitably some minor or major character does a heel turn, becomes the center of a scandal, or just implodes in broad daylight. The Greek chorus then pronounces that they have taken off their “mask” and revealed “who they are” — and have been all along. Everyone else that was previously silent chimes in to reveal supposedly unvoiced misgivings about the disgraced character.

But if they had always been bad, why was it only obvious to people who already disliked them? 4 The common explanation is that the now-disgraced individual was skilled at keeping up appearances, hence the word “mask.” I think this folk model — which is increasingly migrating into the public lexicon used even in conventional news reporting — misunderstands something very important about human psychology and social self-presentation,

Armor as mask

Imagine that you had to wear a suit of armor for most of the day, only taking it off in the short moments you spend alone. Imagine doing this for your entire life, beginning at a very young age. 5 It is hard to believe the armor would somehow be separable from who you “really” are. Your body would adapt to it, it would become integral to how you interact with the world, and your self-understanding would be molded and shaped by it. 6

If you voluntarily or involuntarily abandoned that armor one day, you would not be shedding a disguise and revealing your true nature. It would be a transformative break with the life you lived before, and a sudden displacement of what previously had been an essential extension of your mind and body. The problem with the idea of social performance is the implication one is acting out a role instead of wearing armor to function in the world.

I have always believed that armor is a far superior metaphor for the social self than “mask,” especially the folk model of mask social media use engenders. Armor is protective, but it is also burdensome. Training and physical fitness are essential for those who need to wear it regularly. 7 The function of armor is not to obscure your identity or perform for an audience. Rather, it is a layer in between you and the outside.

We do not consider people wearing spacesuits or PPE gear to be actors wearing costumes. And if we do, we do so in only the loosest sense of the term. Their clothing and equipment comprise a shell extending their bare form. The shell in and of is not a separate identity, it is a necessary barrier between self and world and an augmentation that allows the self to be in the world. And in some cases it may fit tightly around the body it covers.

Burden and protection

The social face comprised by how we “keep up appearances” — do what is expected of us, conform to social norms, be productive members of society — is undoubtedly protective. When we don’t behave “appropriately,” we are often directly or indirectly punished. In some cases, the metaphor becomes literal. Wearing a well-cut suit and tie is expected of us to convey a particular mentality and failure to do so may trigger consequences.

Additionally, much like an unarmored soldier’s body is vulnerable to severe harm, we derive protection from hiding the vulnerable aspects of our personality and presenting a more polished and anonymous social self. However, keeping up appearances is also burdensome. How much energy any particular subcomponent of it extracts is variable, but the costs add up over time.

Some pay a higher price than others. Neurodiverse people lament how tiring it is to constantly model desired social responses, and often struggle to find and sustain gainful employment. Regardless of how much energy it extracts for any notional person, over-adapting to the desires of others can harm the personality much like improper long-term usage of armor can injure and deform the wearer’s body.

It is neither trivial nor cowardly to wear this “armor.” 8 And much as knights and samurai took pride in their armor, we also do not regard our external facing selves solely as encumbering disguises. When we perform our duties skillfully we feel satisfaction. When we retain our dignity in spite of unfavorable circumstances, we keep our pride intact as well. Our armor is not inherently something we are biding our time and waiting to shed.

I believe that social media is slowly eroding our ability to understand and appreciate this due to the effects of its unique affordances. Moreover, the personality model social media encourages is not solely dismissive of what it means to meet social expectations, it is also disdainful of them altogether. It may excessively punish violations of social etiquette, but it also has no conception of etiquette’s true value.

Footnotes

  1. Or at least were there at one point in time prior to the Musk takeover. What I’m writing mainly applies to the Twitter before Musk and shortly after it. The current platform changes are altering the dynamics I am writing about here even if their long-term effects are already baked in to some extent.

  2. Social media is a populist medium, and populism has always abhorred the idea of a distinction between public and private life. For a good discussion of the latter, see the chapter “A Classless Society” in Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism. Moreover, social media’s contrived conception of “authenticity” sometimes delivers the exact opposite. Identity can fragment in strange and unpredictable ways. The depiction of Lain Iwakura’s splitting in Serial Experiments Lain was eerily prescient.

  3. Most people lurk rather than post. Those who post actively fall into several categories: those who want to be known, and those who want to hide. The first type use their real names and usually have some kind of public presence. To be clear, these are ideal-types. I’m guessing you probably fall somewhere on the spectrum in between the polar opposites. There is a similar broad spectrum of uses for a public presence. People network with other “realnames”, promote what they do, or minister to their digital flock. There’s an ensemble cast of “characters”, some of which (for better or worse) take center stage and monopolize all of the attention. There are always new characters being added, but even old minor characters end up being recycled. You just may have to wait a few “seasons” for them to show up. Conflict drives drama, so public dueling and the rise and fall of social climbers are frequent plotlines.

  4. Some explanations allege collusion: the wickedness of X or Y person would be visible if they had been subjected to sufficient scrutiny. Therefore, influential allies colluded in preventing the aforementioned scrutiny from occurring.

  5. Perhaps you begin with a little child-sized suit of armor, and are issued another one when you grow out of it.

  6. If you were an animal or an insect, you’d have a shell, exoskeleton, or carapace and you’d be incapable of surviving without it.

  7. Full plate armor is actually much more flexible than popularly imagined, with the exception of tournament armor. However, flexibility says little about the added energy cost of movement imposed by wearing it over a long period of time. Unsurprisingly, “armor” in the abstract has inspired a great deal of fiction. Science fiction and fantasy — such as the powered armor in Bubblegum Crisis or Warhammer 40K — has made much of the need for careful physiological integration with the wearer. What you think of when you hear the word armor depends a great deal on the historical or fictional context.

  8. People have historically been willing to fight and die to protect their reputations precisely due to how critical its durability is to their well-being.