Photo Courtesy / Ifrah Akhter

Whether it’s Twitter or Facebook, most students are always plugged in to a social network, because it makes socializing at least ten times faster. It’s easy to stay in touch with people when you can Tweet or ‘poke’ them or write on their wall during study breaks.

Using the Internet to express thoughts and opinions is easier too. The web provides a sense of security because it enables us to control and edit our personalities while hiding under the mask of anonymity. There’s the persona of the mask we wear and then there’s the real you, feverishly clicking away at that mouse.

Of course, there isn’t a disparity between everyone’s virtual and real personalities, but we all have at least one friend that acts completely different online than in person.

You might like a person’s picture on Facebook, which is equivalent to giving a compliment, but you might not even talk to that same person if you walked by them. You might also have a blog, which depicts a side of your personality that you don’t express outside of the Internet, but it’s easy to do in the safety of your bedroom.

“People rant or blog about other people, [and] they probably do that because they can’t or don’t want to [confront] that person face to face,” says Seran Sathya, a first-year health studies student.

Social networks are complex worlds. There are your friends and acquaintances, although people often visit their enemy’s profile more than their best friend’s. You have family members blocked, but accept a complete stranger’s friend request. In fact, via Twitter, you may know more about a celebrity than your next-door neighbour.

So who is the real you: the person behind the screen or the persona depicted on the web? Does it really matter that some people act differently online than they do in person? Even based on situations and in-person interactions, we change our preferences and personalities. For example, you can be a different person in front of your boss than when you’re with your best friend, or in a lecture versus a party.

We act differently depending on the context, and the Internet is just another context.

The persona we present virtually is a reflection of who we wish or desire to be, which sometimes matches our real-life personality: how we wish to look, talk and sound, and the qualities we wish we had. In a way, being able to express ourselves online is liberating and strengthens us…but for better or for worse?