Age, school, and location? Might as well leave your SIN and credit card information too: A columns piece I wrote for the Capilano Courier. Art by Kiran Lai.
In 2015, I attended a high school internet safety assembly, in which a dude named The White Hatter taught us cautious social media practices. I was surprised of how I recalled the presenter, let alone a goddamn high school assembly from 5 years ago, but as I was just beginning to use social media at the time, it seems that it stuck with me.
The speaker referenced real-life scenarios like the cyber-bullying case of Amanda Todd and creepily presented data about my entire grade through his simple analysis of our connected Facebooks. The importance of keeping accounts private, deleting intimate data, and avoiding online engagement with strangers was urged early on, when the Internet was considered a dangerous space for children.
Over-sharing online was a concept many were introduced to at early ages, and one that I personally let go of when I graduated high school.
With the extent of the Internet and our immature craving to disobey, warnings didn’t stop an underage generation from signing up for Facebook accounts and spending afterschool time on Omegle (why did we do that?). Today, users are still sharing personal information in their social media profiles and posts. The only thing that did change is how comfortable we’ve become with doing it.
Social media bios are universally used to provide a bit of identity context for others. Depending on where they’re posted (LinkedIn and Grindr bios probably look quite different), we define ourselves in certain ways to set appealing impressions and form social connections easily.
Social media always involves a dimension of self-image: our digital portrayals compensate for our less-interesting/attractive/active (the list goes on) real-life personalities. It became a natural, human instinct to present ourselves online as better than we actually are. With that being said, sometimes, the information we voluntarily add into our social media profiles is exaggerated. And, seriously unnecessary.
Let’s get started with astrological signs. Unless you’re a Gemini (this is a joke), stating your zodiac will help some users assume your personality traits and behaviour. But while most astral sign descriptions and horoscopes are (cough, algorithmically) created to be neutral and purposefully relatable, what’s the point?
In dating apps, users provide their own signs to determine compatibility. Like many, I don’t know my sun, moon or rising signs because my mom doesn’t know the exact time I was born and I’m truly not bothered enough to dig for my birth certificate. Hopefully, just including ‘Aries’ will explain to all the Co-Star users out there why I really don’t care for any of this.
Being one of the babies born before 2000, putting ‘1999’ in my bio felt like a reasonable choice. Most peoples’ fascination in the 90’s decade is correlated to the fact that it set a majority of trends that were recycled into relevance today.
But, after taking a step back, it’s feels similar to when people get tattoos or necklaces of their birth year: it wasn’t that significant. You were birthed, and that’s all. If you surpassed a disease-related treatment or had a special loved one pass away a certain year, it has much more meaning and value. And, in a logical context, adding one’s birth year allows for others to calculate your age. Realistically, when I’m old and pruny, I won’t prefer to feature 1999 anywhere.
Relationship statuses are the MVP’s of bio content: the initials, the key and lock emoji, and my personal favourite, the exact month, day and year of when they started dating. This sub-genre of S/O users are just so in love that they want the world to know, when literally no one asked. And for whatever reason, if someone did want to find out, their Instagram photos and Facebook relationship status probably provide enough evidence of their infatuation.
…Or maybe I’m just really single.
I’ve also noticed a lot of classmates’ accounts highlighting the university they’re attending, some even including their projected year of graduation. The explicit prestige that comes with post-secondary education was cultivated by American TV shows, which instilled this feeling of pride in getting accepted into college.
But, as most Canadian post-secondary students can relate, a diploma is a diploma. It can help classmates in searching for and adding you to a Facebook group chat, but aside from friend-requesting and working on projects, the school title will get deleted soon after graduation day. Unless it’s to look good for a potential employer on LinkedIn, users can probably figure out what school you attend according to your study sessions and geotags on Snapchat or Instagram Stories. Just keep it to yourself and grind for that degree.
Quotes are what I consider the make-or-break micro-moments of whether I’d stay on a user’s social media page or click off. Responsible users include their career titles, hobbies, and links to their art or branded work. Since most young adults don’t have their dream jobs just yet, spend most of their leisure time watching Netflix docuseries instead of doing assignments (I might’ve sent this to the editor a day late for some reason…), or simply don’t care, their social media bios tend to be unprofessional and probably meme-related.
Please refer to Dylan Sprouse’s past Twitter bio, which read “Child actor who didn’t do meth. Also: Amateur Video Game Designer, Self-Proclaimed Artist and Pokemon Enslaver”, rather than simply stating his prominent career as a famous actor.
In the end, I’m a hypocrite: my birth year ‘1999’ is currently in my Instagram bio. I probably put the date of when I officially secured my first boyfriend in elementary school in my Facebook About Me section. I absolutely added ‘CAPU CMNS’ to my Twitter bio when I got accepted into the university program after high school, and ‘SFU CMNS’ when I transferred last semester.
Overexposure is almost a requirement when on the Internet, and especially so when using social media. We want to be noticed, give our digital selves lives, and make connections with others. Since not talking to strangers online is arguably impossible now, and people are still posting whatever they want, it’s clear that the digital world became more lenient and relatively safer.
Growing up with the internet made us feel comfortable with what we share about ourselves, regardless of whether it’s considered too much information.
Bio Art drawn by Kiran Lai
