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Take a moment to think about how you’re dressed today. Are you wearing casual clothes or something more professional? You select your clothing to make a specific impression, based on what you’ll be doing and who you’ll be seeing. Likewise, when you select photos, post updates, and share information online, you create an impression that influences how others see you.

If you have a social media account, look at your profile: the photos, status updates, or links you’ve posted and your list of friends. What does all this say about you? Are you fun and outgoing? A hard partier? Deeply philosophical? A humanitarian? A shopaholic? In a study of almost 400 Facebook profiles, researchers found that 92 percent of users posted a personal photograph, 83 percent made their wall public, and 55 percent indicated their sexual orientation (Nosko, Wood, & Molema, 2010). You could learn a lot about someone just from that information alone!

When you set up a social media profile, you make a series of decisions about how to present your self. Such choices determine your online face, or the positive self you want others to see (Goffman, 1955). Creating your online face is an important part of your online self-presentation, and it requires as much careful planning and management as does your in-person self-presentation.