In our modern technological society, almost everyone of us have a ‘virtual life’, a life that exists (sometimes exclusively) online. With the multiple social networking platforms which include  Facebook,Twitter, Instagram, and Vines, although some may decide to not engage with social media at all, some people exhaustively document their lives on social media.For those who document every aspect of their lives, and construct a second identity online, I question, why do they do this? What impels people to contribute and to reveal their private lives to such a public global community?

Through my own observations of Facebook, I find the social media platform a way to share their aspects of their private life and use it as a way to show how engaged the individuals are in socialization and exhibit their ‘bettered’ lives. For instance, when looking at my feed, (especially after the weekend) I see countless ‘photo albums’ of people ‘having a great time’ at a party or a night out. Furthermore with my own experiences, after being the designated photographer of an event, I sometimes get people to tell me, “Upload those pictures!!”. What encourages individuals to share these pictures with 300 known others that are my Facebook ‘Friends’, and millions of unknown others that may be in connection with ‘Friends of my Friends’? As a personal response to when I see pictures of others ‘having a great time’, I sometimes feel jealously and excluded. The contrast of being alone at home scrolling through my Newsfeed by myself, creates this conflict within the individual of potentially being ‘anti-social’, which is a very common pressure for adolescents in our current technological society due to social media. Facebook is a tool for individuals to explicitly reveal the elusive relationships they have with the rest of the world and to display their deviation from the ‘anti-social’ stigma and instead reveal themselves rather social.

In addition on Facebook, on Youtube there are vloggers who are Youtube personalities and upload video blogs of themselves, revealing their interests, introducing their family members and friends, and at times rant to the camera about what angers them. There are several ‘daily vloggers’ who broadcast exhaustive information about their daily lives in a 6-8 minute video as well,uploading every single day to a massively global network. But…..who cares and why do people millions of people continue to watch these videos? As demonstrated by Facebook, what other people want to know what others’ are up to, perhaps to compare their lives with others. Especially with daily vlogs on Youtube, people also feel involved and like they are part someone’s life by participating in watching the videos. It also becomes a routine for themselves as well as it becomes a habitual action for them to watch the videos everyday and keeping up to date with the vlogs. (Some examples of daily vloggers: Louis Cole (aka FunforLouis), Grace Helbig (aka DailyGrace), Shay Carl (aka SHAYTARDS)

Thus, essentially, the success of life narratives comes from the audience who are interested in other peoples’ lives. The voyueristic nature in humans, as Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd mention, is the backbone to the success of personal storytelling. These social media sites where people share content of themselves is existent and successful due the audiences who wish to watch them. People are curious of others’ unspoken private lives, and social media allows people to undertake this endeavour.