Have you noticed how social media influences our personality traits? While Instagram fuels the anxious narcissist, new research has found, Facebook appeals to our seductive instincts.
On Instagram, you can get rid of your wrinkles, make your lips are softer, and you become the best version of yourself, just with a couple of taps.
If you attempt a similar tap on X (once Twitter), and write something political that does not go down well or is misinterpreted, your life can suddenly take a shocking nosedive.
Krüger uses perspectives from psychoanalysis to explore how digital platforms such as Google, X (Twitter), YouTube, Google, Instagram, and Facebook reveal or highlight different sides of our personality.
Social Media’s Power to Shape Our Lives
Social media platforms shape our lives in various ways. They play on our unconscious minds. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), was the first to introduce the concept of the unconscious mind in his groundbreaking theory.
Krüger said,
“Freud’s psychoanalysis is not entirely respectable in academia. He talks about the oral stage early in our development where the mouth is the erogenous zone, followed by the anal stage, when we learn to use the bathroom. All this bodily stuff is embarrassing to be confronted with.”
Even so, Krüger used some aspects of psychoanalysis in his research.
Connecting psychoanalysis to modern media
The unconscious is inherently contradictory and rife with internal conflicts, influencing all aspects of our lives. However, it is uncommon to link psychoanalysis with contemporary media and digital platforms in the way Krüger does in his work.
When you post pictures of yourself on Instagram, do you experience a strange mix of self-obsession and anxiety? That is not surprising, because Instagram brings out the anxious narcissist within us who craves validation, according to Krüger’s theory.
Kruger said,
“In recent times, the connection between narcissism – characterized by self-centeredness and self-love – and popular culture has been dismissed. However, I believe it is a significant and accurate explanation for why we take selfies.”
“The more insecure we are, the more we strive to present ourselves perfectly to get attention and to feel loved and seen.”
In 1914, Sigmund Freud wrote an essay that became formative for the understanding of narcissism. He distinguished between a form of narcissism that is normal in human development and narcissistic personality disorder.
Although psychoanalysis has been a well-established academic field in Krüger’s home country, Germany, it has not had the same influence in Norway.
Kruger…