The Shape Of Our Online Identity

Chances are you have some kind of “username” you’ve created for yourself. You use it for a variety of services online; perhaps one for commenting on blogs and newsmedia stories, another for a hobby network you belong to? Our research also shows us that 80% of the visitors reading this blog are over 22 and have or are getting a university education.

But what about our identities that we use in Cyburbia? Or as some call those who spend any amount of time online “Digital Natives.” How do we shape our online identity and how is it different between age groups? We’ve compiled aggregated data from over 100 research projects to better understand how a persons identity shapes depending on their age group and phase of life.

The chart below captures some interesting elements of our online identity development. As can be readily seen, the younger we are, the more we tend to explore and play with identities online. As we get older, our identity begins to solidify and our online world and activities relate to our real-world engagement. When we are young, shifting identities is easy. As we are older, this becomes harder to do…we have jobs, mortgages, debt and a family (most likely) to raise. This data is also very much a “now” chart in that as the Internet generation grows older, these indicators that apply today, will change.

It is also interesting to note the similarities in online behaviour to offline, especially in the areas of loyalty to social media services and how often we tend to change or alter our identity. As teens, we are beginning to find our “way” in the world; shape who we are, what we can do and find early independence. as we get older, our careers are more defined and we may have moved to becoming parents and all that that entails. We also found it interesting that the most active period of identity changes came at 14-19.

We broke out the age groups this way because that is the trend the data showed us. We go through periods of more rapid identity change when we are younger than when we’ve settled into careers and other aspects of an older life.

What do you find interesting about this data?