Flattened Identities: How Social Media Shapes Perception of Culture, Personality and Belief Systems

By:
Banyu Iman Afzalurrahman (123241011)
Yuni Sari Amalia, S.S., M.A., Ph.D

INTRO

Social media has basically remixed how we show who we are. One minute you're following a dance trend from halfway across the world, the next you're seeing five portraits of "authentic" culture on repeat. It's fun, you learn things, meet people, and borrow bits of other cultures. But it's also weirdly shallow sometimes, complicated traditions get turned. There's a downside: when everything travels that quickly, it gets simplified. Complex culture and unique stories can turn into slogans, trends, or stereotypes. 

Flattened identities show up when social media rewards what's catchy and easy to sell. Cultural practices, personalities, and beliefs get turned into hashtags, trends, or quick clips, and their history and context get left behind. That makes it easy for people to borrow or steal parts of a culture without understanding them, and it can reinforce tired stereotypes. Algorithms don't help; they keep pushing the same familiar voices, which buries less visible people, even though those platforms can sometimes give marginalized groups a chance to be heard.

Social media's weirdly powerful. It helps people, especially young ones and folks who don't usually get a voice, to build identity, find their people, and speak up. You get this cool mash-up of local global culture, like someone reworking an old family tradition into something fresh. But there's a catch too because of it, the stuff that travels best online is simple, catchy stuff. So deep roots and complicated histories can get lost, and stereotypes slip in. The trick is enjoying the creativity while remembering to dig a bit deeper and respect where things came from.

Social Media as a Double-Edged Sword in Cultural Identity Formation

These days, social media is where a lot of us figure out who we are. Apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter let people from everywhere share bits of their culture, food, music, rituals, even jokes, and those tiny moments travel farther and faster than ever before. For younger people, especially, these platforms are playgrounds for trying on identities, mixing influences, and finding people who "get" them. I love how diaspora communities use them to keep stories, languages, and traditions alive for younger generations who might otherwise lose touch. You also see people remixing global trends with local customs into totally new expressions, a dance move with a hometown twist, or a recipe passed down through TikTok. That blending makes the world feel smaller and more connected, and it can spark real curiosity and understanding between cultures in ways old-school media rarely did. Social media isn't perfect, but it's reshaping how we pass culture forward, messy, creative, and surprisingly human.

Social media can bring people and cultures together,  but it also causes problems. Big, popular cultures often end up drowning out smaller ones. Because everything's curated and moves so fast, traditions get flattened into pretty pictures with no backstory. Viral trends can turn real cultural symbols into props for likes, which ends up spreading stereotypes instead of real understanding. And on top of that, algorithms decide what we see, usually boosting the loudest, most dominant voices and keeping existing power imbalances online.  

Social media lets many different cultures meet, but it also has a dark side. The loudest, most polished posts usually win, so smaller cultures get lost. Traditions become trendy props instead of stories we actually learn from. That shortcut to "cool" can make things feel surface-level, and the algorithm just keeps feeding us the same favorites, which makes real understanding harder.

Stereotypes and Flattened Identities on Social Media

It's weird how social media makes everything bite-sized, including people. Take introverts: online they often get squished into a handful of jokes and labels, "quiet," "awkward," "needs to come out of their shell." But that is not the real introvert. Introvert usually meaning someone works alone, likes deeper conversations, or prefers smaller groups, it's not a checklist of flaws. The problem because that the memes, influencers, and quick captions turn this nuance complex into a punchline or a brand.