“Youth seem to construct and co-construct their personal, social, gender, and ethnic identities in online environments as they are faced with the crucial questions of who they are, where they belong, and what they want to do with their lives.” (Chp 4, Constructing Identity Online: Identity Exploration and Self Preservation)

Adolescent students are trying to understand and learn about themselves. They are at a point in their lives where they are struggling to identify with their personal, social, gender, and ethnic identities; as the excerpt above states. Many of these students also feel the strain of authority figures in their lives, such as their parents and teachers, telling them about the person they feel as though they should become. Many of us wrote about this expectation of “perfection” in previous MVP posts.

Identifying in this world can be difficult, regardless of your age.

Creating an online identity sets adolescents free from the expectations of who they believe they should become, or are expected to become. There is a freedom on the internet that they do not have in reality because of the strain that reality can have on their lives. Unfortunately, as the article stated, it is unclear as to how the physical and mental health of adolescents is affected by this “escape from reality”.