Are we losing our real identity in the online world?

IF YOU had two minutes to tell the story of your life and explain who you are, what would you say?

Would you tick off the big moments such as marriage and the birth of children? Would it be your career you talked about, or travel to distant places?

Would you focus only on the highs, or be honest about the lows? Or would your life story instead depend entirely on the audience you were talking to?

This week while listening to a Radio New Zealand lifestyle interview as I worked, a comment by an expert on this topic filtered through the white noise so often provided by radio and struck a chord with me.

Rather than having one "identity" as you would naturally expect when considering the concept, today thanks largely to social media we have several, and have become adept at switching between them depending on who is tuning in. Basically, we are whoever we think people want us to be at any given time.

And so it is that on LinkedIn we choose to come across as swanky and professional, suited up in the profile pic and looking all "Captain of Industry", while just across the social network way on Facebook it's wine-in-hand selfies at 2am (or for me, the 11pm working mother equivalent). On Twitter the lines are blurred between our professional and personal selves with an emphasis on wit and intellect, while on Instagram we tap into our inner artist and in-ap photo filters to project our personality de jour with images.

Before photography took over most of the waking hours of my life, I dabbled in freelance copywriting, particularly website content and other wordy little snippets required by the corporate sector.

One of the first things I would ask upon starting a rewrite was what personality the company wanted to project. What they were selling mattered far less than how they wanted to be perceived by those buying what they had to offer.

Increasingly, we've become more relaxed in the way we present ourselves professionally - both in the clothes we wear to work and the words we use to conduct business. Perhaps that is because we now conduct so much of our business online, meaning we have to take every opportunity in that impersonal forum to convey the trust and personality that used to be communicated by a firm handshake and open smile.

The reality of this multi-platform/multiple personality projection is that the lines are being blurred between who we really are, and who we've projected ourselves to be. It doesn't help that Facebook and its ilk are so often forums for presenting a rose-tinted version of our world. In reality I suspect people are smiling an awful lot less than their profile pictures are suggesting.

Which is sad. Who could have foreseen a technological "advancement" that let us instantly connect with our friends could become so isolating?

With this in mind and in fear of losing sight of who I really am, I'm setting myself this challenge and I invite you to do it too; every morning for a week make a point of briefly telling your dog, cat or canary who you really are in a couple of sentences. What do you believe in? What have been the true highs and lows of your life, not just the ones on Facebook? I'm not sure what I expect, except perhaps to preserve a piece of the offline Eva before I forget who that is and permanently become my online self.

-Eva Bradley is a columnist and photographer.