In “I Tweet, Therefore I Am,” Peggy Orenstein poses the following question to herself: “How much, I began to wonder, was I shaping my Twitter feed, and how much was Twitter shaping me?” It is crucial to examine the purpose behind social media such as twitter. What is the purpose of it and how exactly is it being used? It can be an excellent tool for communication. In a world where answers are needed instantly and where people do not have the time or patience to wait, twitter is perfect. It connects friends afar, allows fans to delve into celebrity lives, promotes a business or charity, and much more.

However, I completely agree with the Peggy Orenstein when she says, “all the world was once a stage, it has now become a reality TV show: we mere players are not just aware of the camera; we mug for it.” Everything is about image and perception. For example, imagine if the words that we just tweeted would be seen by not a single person in the world. The words that that we chose, the style, and tone would completely be different. We do not tweet as we would write in our journal because we know that others are going to see it. It is just like if a guest were to enter out home and observe our life. The way that we behave towards our family and the words we say and how we act changes.  In the same sense, there is physical camera that hovers over us as we write and this affects our writing and  so we are somewhat changing our identity. Even the title, “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” suggests that twitter forms our identity—that twitter validates us and only because we tweet, we are something of value.

Now, all of this is not necessarily a bad thing. By having a 140-character limit, it forces us to concisely present ourselves and articulate our thoughts. The world has become fast paced and in order to keep up with it, we have to learn to be concise and so this is great practice. At the end of the day it is completely our responsibility to use twitter in a way that is beneficial. It is our choice on how we allow social media such as Twitter to affect us and what we do with it.