Learning About Ourselves in a Whole New Way

I found this video to be absolutely amazing.

We, as in grad students, are still young. Most of us are still probably trying to find ourselves in one way or another. Who we are, who we want to be, how we want to present ourselves to the world, how we want to be towards others. These are important questions to ask ourselves in order to mature into better human beings; of course, as long as we try to take an honest and fairly selfless approach.
I think the main reason youtube was the main medium discussed in this video was because of the idea of identity and recognition. Young people, and all people for that matter I suppose, are feeling like the spotlight is where they will be special. At the same time though, youtube provides this atmosphere where a person can "unload" or speak their minds in a way they might not ever in a face to face situation. This is, as he said, a way to become more self aware and more self consciousness on the questions I brought up earlier. In addition, they are able to go back and evaluate themselves in a way they never had before, and this has profound implications.

I find the search for the self in context of the whole an extremely important endeavor that every person should attempt to do. On top of that, I cannot separate the search for self and identity, the quest for meaning in life to promote better understanding and thus a facilitation in the search for self and identity, to be at all incongruent with my job as a social studies teacher.
I used social studies at first as a way to understand how and why people act the way they do in order to understand myself better. As I studied more, I developed a feeling of obligation to do something, to play a part in the betterment of society; to be a good person and a good citizen.
I want to instill these very same things in my students. At the beginning of the semester, I began to feel that having a blog would be a great way to promote honest answers and discussion to alleviate the pressure and anxiety many students feel with class discussion. I hope that through time, my students will be better versed in stating their opinions well and respectfully, and through writing may gain a sense of flow and confidence that can transfer into the classroom. I saw technology as a useful means before, but I am definitely more adamant about wanting to implement it in creative ways I hadn't thought of before.

Going back to my first discussion on the issues of self and our relations with others in the context of social networking, I wanted to give a few examples of myself to illustrate the point, and to show why this video really had such a huge impact on me.
First and most basic, it has allowed me to stay in touch and regain touch with people that are far away; this is really important to me because family is really important to me, and things like webcam and facebook and camera phones allow me to really stay close to them. In addition to that, it has made the processes of reconciling with someone easier. My little sister and I haven't really talked for months because of a particular life choice she made, and this has been really hard on the both of us in light of the fact that our mother passed away last February. We should have been supporting each other, but we didn't until very recently. She signed up for facebook, and it has allowed us to slowly begin to have conversation again without having to rush into uncomfortable and superficial chats on the phone. It has essentially allowed me to show her I love and care for her, but that I am still not condoning her actions.
In relation to finding our identities, I must say that I have often been uncomfortable in my own skin, contemplating simultaneously how I was presenting myself, whether it was an accurate representation, and whether I wanted to continue being and presenting myself as such. This is borderline obsessive, I know, but my point comes down to this: facebook has allowed me to embrace myself as a unique individual more than I ever have. My biggest example is that I post very personal poems that I write that often show a darker side of me that many people don't really see in person. This in consequence, has allowed me to be more accepting of myself, more comfortable with myself around others, and has allowed me to be even more genuine and show more sides of myself than I have before. Lastly, it has allowed me to be more forgiving when I mess up, because I have come to embrace the fact that none of us are perfect and we all make mistakes; we just have to learn from them and move on.

If I can show my students even just a glimpse of the positive potentials of social networking, I will be a very happy person.

Would anyone like to share a way that social networking has influenced their sense of self and identity?
If we think about this personally and perhaps share it with our students, I believe it can have a positive impact on our students perceptions of social networking and the ways in which it influences who we are, who we want to be, and how we get there.