Excessive Self-Presentation on Facebook One Year of Analysis of Online Posting

Facebook and social networks in general have exploded in popularity in the last several years, becoming a social institution for teenagers, who use it for self-presentation and as a fundamental tool to project their personal identity and manage social relationships. Taking the opportunity to reveal psychological features by analyzing personal profiles, this study examined the relationship between linguistic style, self-presentation, and other activities on Facebook over the course of one year. Through the linguistic analysis of 50 adolescents’ profiles, a new model titled “The Excessive Online Self-Presentation Model” was developed by considering only the contents of their public posts. Results showed how excessive self-presentation consisted of disclosing personal information, and with a higher number of words per post. Moreover, it was discovered that the frequent use of sexual language was associated with attention-seeking behaviors. The findings of this study were in line with prior research on the content differences in online self-presentation, confirming how linguistic analysis can be a useful tool to analyze cognitive dynamics within virtual environments, and providing a new assessment model to reveal fundamental psychological characteristics of adolescent online behavior.