Multiple identities online?

The Huffing Post website shown an article on a young teenage girl was rape and murdered by a 33 years old man who fake his Facebook profile. It attracted many interest and become online "friends". Most of them are female from the age of 13 up to 31. He would then attempt to redirect them to private chat-rooms where he would invite them to provide sexual explicit details.

Over 40million users are active in Facebook and I would be one of them who are "addicted" into it. There are also who uses multiple identities, name, age, gender, and email address. Who are you? Who are you online? Are you the same to everyone? Should you be?

The article above is one negative aspect from having multiple identities. Some people are taking the advantage to do negative act. According to Romano (2010),“online identity is a persona that someone forms online and sometimes different from the real form. It allows individual to form a complete different persona.”

When we decided to join online community, we often have a choice on how much personal information to place into the profile database. Depending on the amount of desire we have, whether to lurk around or to hide completely. It is indicating the person’s need to split his entire personal identity from his observing of those around them. Some people may want to look but not to be seen. The psychology expert (Suler, 2000) said that, “One of the interesting thing about the Internet is the opportunity it offers people to present themselves in a variety of different ways.”

I personally feel multiple identities can be very good; it separate our important working or schooling data from "junks". I use different name and email address to describe myself in different online network, such as Facebook and professional website purposes. Those people who knows me do not feel disturb with the change of name.

In Conclusion

It is okay to Play around and trying on different characteristics are part of the fun of an online life. We can even change the way present yourself to others, and we can learn more about things that interest us. And, just as in real life, we can take steps to help make sure we stay in control.

References:

Harrison & Thomas, 2009, Identity in Online Communities: Social Networking Sites and Language Learning', Reviewed on 13th June 2010

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/hosting/ijets/journal/V7N2/pdf/Article4-HarrisonThomas.pdf

Romano, 2010, 'What is Online Identity', Reviewed on 13th June 2010,

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-online-identity.htm

Suler, J.R (2002), 'Identity Management in Cyberspace', Reviewed on 13th June 2010:

http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/identitymanage.html

The Huffing Post, 2010, ' Serial sex offender admits using Facebook to rape and murder teen', Reviewed on 13th June 2010

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/peter-chapman-admits-usin_n_489674.html