How to Exist on the Internet While Still Preserving Your Privacy, Personhood, and Well-Being

How do we preserve our well-being in a world that often encourages us to share more and commodify ourselves? In this way, we start to feel less like humans and more like brands.

If you’re like me, maybe you struggle with the innate tension of never fully closing the gap between our actual selves and our online selves—and I’d argue we don’t actually want this, nor do we need it.

I’ll preface all this by saying I’m an introvert, but I’m also a writer who values connecting with readers, and the internet is a great way to do that. Maybe you’re like me and you want to connect with people online in a way that feels good, but you’re also constantly finding ways in which it doesn’t feel good. For one, it feels vulnerable and a lot of the time (especially on social media) there’s an ick factor for all of us.

In this article, I’ll explore how we might preserve our personhood and privacy while existing, working, and connecting online—and some tips I’m trying out for myself.

The dual consciousness of existing online

I want to first highlight what I think is happening for many of us who are trying to exist online: our dual consciousness. If you’re like me, you’re probably constantly managing your reputation online: your bios, which social platforms you’re on, your website, newsletter, etc. Sometimes we evolve in real life and our online personas lag behind. For example, our business might shift, but our old website is still up.

This might even happen in a simple way. We might share the happiest photo online and then five minutes later, we cry. This is a dramatic example, but serves a point. It’s impossible to constantly display our full human experience online, nor would we ever want that. But as a result, our online selves will always feel like a hollow extension of our true human selves.

This is another reason why “branding” ourselves often falls short. In a recent conversation with my friend, Andrea Jacobsen, she told me that a key to her online success has been narrowly defining what she does to half a sentence. In her case, she paints women in dresses. She said it was uncomfortable to limit what she’s known for, but it’s helped her online popularity because she’s known for something specific that she does well. In this example, Andrea created a clear understanding of her online persona even though it’s only a sliver of her full, real human self. She’s crafting and using her online persona to her advantage—and completely understands its limitations.

It’s also natural to constantly wonder how our reputation is being perceived. We are social creatures; we don’t want to isolate ourselves by turning people off online. But constantly managing our reputation according to other people’s perceptions is exhausting and impossible. When we exist online in a public way, we can’t control who is viewing it. We can split our consciousness in a thousand directions trying to think through how everyone perceives us, but that’s exhausting, pointless, and doesn’t make us feel well.

Last, we want to connect authentically, and we’ve been told that authenticity means closing the gap between our actual selves and our internet selves, but that’s impossible. There will always be a mismatch.

So how do we instead harness all of this as a good thing? How do we reclaim this inherent difference to our benefit? Here’s my attempt at a few answers:

Embrace the difference between your online persona and personhood

The first answer is simple: we just acknowledge that there’s a chasm between our real self and our online self. We start to understand that someone knowing us online will always be a hollow version of knowing us in real life. We can connect online in very real ways, but it’s not entirely the same and that’s okay.

I don’t think that means we need to discard connecting online entirely just because it’s not perfect. We just need to understand its limitations, so when our online persona feels different and limiting compared to our real self, we don’t need to shame ourselves for it. It’s a natural byproduct of the systems we’re living in, particularly social media.

Use your persona to your advantage and be clear on the difference

Now that we know there’s an innate chasm between our real self and online self, we can start to ask ourselves how we might construct our online self for a certain end. This doesn’t have to be a financial end, although I’d say that’s how most people take advantage of the concept of branding themselves.

In my case, the way I’ve been thinking of this is “what do I want to be known for.”

My phone call with Andrea also reflected this back to me. I have many diverse interests and displaying them all online can make it hard for even me to keep up with everything I’m doing. It’s forced me to peel back layers and say to myself, “It’s okay to have all these interests but not all of these interests need to be public-facing.” In fact, Andrea said something to me on the call that I’ll put here:

“It’s not only bad for business to be known for too many things. It’s bad for you.”

This stuck with me. Not about it being bad for business, but more so about it being bad for me.

Through this conversation, I’ve started a much deeper exploration of what I want to be known for and how I might display that strategically online as a means to a desired end. After all, once we’re clear on this we can make a clear line in the sand delineating our full human selves apart from our public-facing online self, which I’d argue is very good for our well-being and what we’re trying to accomplish in the public ether.

Have clear boundaries for your privacy and well-being

I’ve often asked myself, “Do I share family news online? Relationship status? Outings with friends? Trips? What’s relevant and what’s not?” We’re rewarded for sharing ourselves more personally online. It makes us feel more “real.” But are we sharing more of ourselves because we want to and it feels good, or because we want the reward of feeling known, seen, and liked?

I’ve been asking myself more recently: Do I want to share at all?

When you can say “my life is truly mine” and “I exist online” and both of those things are true at the same time in uncompromising ways, then you probably have great boundaries. I don’t think any of us has this perfectly figured out, and given that we’re all constantly evolving, our boundaries will, too.

“Out” your shadow and let go

It’s impossible to exist online in some way and not talk about the vulnerability that comes with it.

The way I’ve come to think about this is to embrace what I’m willing to share and think of it as “outing” my shadow.

There’s a certain personal overcoming and victory that comes with existing online in a way that feels good to you. We can all find this for ourselves and change it up over time.

Evolve publicly: the soft skills of being online

We might think we’re in this niche or this lane and then change. That’s okay. It’s better to change than be stuck. It’s better to switch up your boundaries than continue to feel off.

If I’ve taken one thing away from writing this article it’s that there’s a soft skill to existing online in a way that feels comfortable. I believe these soft skills surround our personhood, privacy, and well-being.

When we can focus and get clear on those three things, we have a chance at succeeding in a way that actually feels good. Because at the end of the day, we exist online to connect with one another and be known for what we can uniquely offer the world. Both of these are worthwhile pursuits, as long as we stay well in the process.

How do you think about your personhood, privacy, and well-being while existing online? I’d love to hear: kasia@kasiamanolas.com.