Exploring Adolescent Identity: Embodied Selfhood and Meta-Awareness in the Age of Social Media Validation

Abstract

A critical time for self-discovery, adolescence is a time when people work through the complexity of their identities and look to their peers for approval. Social media plat-forms, on the other hand, have drastically changed this process and brought with them both potential and obstacles. This study seeks to understand how meta-awareness, influenced by the digitization of self-presentation on social media, interacts with the need for validation in adolescents. Additionally, the researcher seeks to understand how the embodied sense of self influences adolescents’ perceptions of body image and identity formation in the context of social media platforms. For this study, 120 students were recruited from schools in Pune and were employed a structured questionnaire. This study offers insights for educators, parents, and mental health professionals to help adolescents healthy identity development while also advancing our understanding of adolescent identity formation in the era of social media validation especially when validation is quantifiable.