Chapter 31: Exercises — Adolescent Identity Formation in the Age of the Algorithm

Reflection Exercises

Exercise 1 [Reflection] Think about your own process of identity formation during adolescence. What were the key domains in which you were exploring possible selves (values, interests, aesthetic style, political beliefs, relationships)? Which of Marcia's identity statuses (diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, achievement) best describes where you were in each domain at age 14? At age 18? How did those statuses shift over time?

Exercise 2 [Reflection] If you used social media during your adolescence, reflect on how your online persona compared to your offline identity. Was there a gap? In what direction did the gap run—was your online self more idealized, more authentic, more extreme, or different in some other way? What drove the choices you made about self-presentation?

Exercise 3 [Reflection] Recall a piece of content you posted online as a teenager (or young adult, if that is your experience) that you would not post today. What does that piece of content reveal about who you were at the time of posting? How do you feel about its continued existence in a digital archive? What does this suggest about the "photographic archive" problem described in the chapter?

Exercise 4 [Reflection] The chapter describes the "looking-glass self"—the idea that we form our self-image partly by perceiving how others see us. In your experience, how much of your self-image was formed through social feedback on social media (likes, comments, followers)? Does the version of yourself that gets the most social media engagement accurately represent who you feel yourself to be?

Exercise 5 [Reflection] Think about an influencer or online creator you followed closely at some point in your adolescence. In what ways did your relationship to this person function like a parasocial relationship? Did following this person affect your self-image, your values, or your aspirations? Were these effects positive or negative?

Exercise 6 [Reflection] The chapter describes "context collapse"—the collision of multiple audiences (family, friends, employers) into a single social media audience. Have you experienced context collapse? How did you manage it? Did it affect your self-expression in ways you resented, or did it help you develop a more consistent, authentic self-presentation?

Exercise 7 [Reflection] Erikson argued that identity development requires a period of moratorium—exploration without premature commitment. Think about a belief, value, or identity domain where you went through genuine exploration and arrived at a considered commitment. How did that exploration process work? Could you have done it on social media, with a large audience watching, without the permanence of the archive creating pressure toward premature closure?

Research Exercises

Exercise 8 [Research] Look up James Marcia's original work on identity statuses (published from the 1960s onward). Find and summarize his criteria for classifying individuals into each of the four identity statuses. Then find one recent study (published after 2015) that has applied Marcia's framework in a digital or social media context. How did the researchers adapt the framework for contemporary adolescent experience?

Exercise 9 [Research] Research danah boyd's work on "context collapse" and adolescent social media use. Specifically, find her book It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (2014) or her published papers on the topic. How does she characterize the strategies teenagers use to manage context collapse? What does she find about the relationship between teenagers' public self-presentation and their private sense of self?

Exercise 10 [Research] Find and review the Wall Street Journal's 2021 investigation into TikTok's recommendation algorithm and its effects on adolescent users (the investigation that used newly created accounts to test the algorithm's behavior). What specific findings did the investigation document? How quickly was a new account directed toward mental health content? What types of content appeared in the feed trajectory?

Exercise 11 [Research] Research the concept of "possible selves" (Markus and Nurius, 1986). How have subsequent researchers applied this concept to social media? Find at least two peer-reviewed papers that study how social media exposure to different "possible selves" affects adolescent identity development. What are their main findings?

Exercise 12 [Research] Research the phenomenon of "identity diffusion" in the social media era. Find at least two peer-reviewed papers that examine whether social media use is associated with identity diffusion or other identity statuses in adolescents. What do they find? How do they measure identity status?

Exercise 13 [Research] Investigate the research on parasocial relationships with social media influencers among adolescents. Find three peer-reviewed studies from the last five years. For each, summarize: the definition of parasocial relationship used, how they measured it, what outcomes they associated with it, and what they found. What patterns emerge across the studies?

Exercise 14 [Research] Find and read the research on "finsta" (private or second Instagram accounts) and adolescent identity. Why do adolescents maintain multiple accounts? What functions do private accounts serve that public accounts do not? What does the phenomenon of finstagramming reveal about adolescent identity management in social media environments?

Analysis Exercises

Exercise 15 [Analysis] Apply Marcia's four identity statuses to four different hypothetical social media users: (a) A 15-year-old who has taken on her parents' political and religious views without question and uses social media to confirm these views; (b) A 16-year-old who tries on different aesthetic identities on TikTok but hasn't committed to any; (c) A 17-year-old who doesn't use social media and feels no particular direction in life; (d) A 18-year-old who, after exploring several communities online, has committed to values of environmental activism and developed a stable sense of what she cares about. Which status does each represent? What aspects of social media use facilitated or impeded movement toward identity achievement?

Exercise 16 [Analysis] The chapter distinguishes between "algorithmic identity assignment" and the traditional process of identity formation. Construct a table comparing the two processes across the following dimensions: who controls the process, what data it uses, how reversible it is, what the incentives driving it are, and what its likely developmental effects are. What are the most significant differences?

Exercise 17 [Analysis] The "looking-glass self" (Cooley) and Erikson's moratorium are both relevant to understanding social media and identity formation, but they point in somewhat different directions. The looking-glass self suggests that social feedback is a normal and important part of self-formation. Erikson's moratorium suggests that self-formation requires some protection from social pressure. How can both be true? Construct an argument that reconciles these perspectives in the context of social media.

Exercise 18 [Analysis] The chapter describes "authentic" versus "strategic" self-presentation and notes that authenticity is associated with better mental health outcomes. But is authenticity always the right goal for self-presentation? Construct an argument for the legitimacy of strategic self-presentation in at least some contexts. Then construct a counter-argument. What does this debate reveal about the complexity of using "authenticity" as a design goal for social media?

Exercise 19 [Analysis] The pro-eating-disorder content pathway described in the chapter involves an algorithm serving harmful content to a vulnerable user who is engaging intensely with that content. The algorithm is responding to genuine engagement signals, not deliberately targeting vulnerable users. Analyze this situation using the framework of "gap between intent and effect" from the book's themes. Who bears moral responsibility for this outcome—the algorithm designers, the content creators, the platform, the users, or some combination?

Exercise 20 [Analysis] The chapter presents social media as having different effects on different adolescents at different identity stages. Analyze how Marcia's identity moratorium would unfold differently for: (a) a teenager in a big city with a diverse peer group and rich offline social resources; (b) a teenager in a rural community with limited access to diverse perspectives; (c) a transgender teenager whose identity category is largely absent from their immediate physical environment. For each, what functions does social media serve in identity development, and what risks does it pose?

Exercise 21 [Analysis] Velocity Media's "identity exploration" feature deliberately diversifies recommendations for adolescent users to prevent algorithmic foreclosure. Evaluate this intervention from a platform design perspective: What assumptions does it make about what "diverse" recommendations look like? Who decides the diversity criteria? Could this intervention inadvertently expose adolescents to content they would prefer to avoid? Is there a meaningfully different ethical character to platform-curated diversity versus algorithmic personalization?

Creative Exercises

Exercise 22 [Creative] Write a short story (1,000-1,500 words) from the perspective of a 15-year-old navigating their first year on a social media platform. The story should trace the emergence and evolution of their online identity, including at least one moment where the algorithmic recommendation system shapes their self-concept in a significant way (either positively or negatively). The story should be specific and grounded in realistic details of how platforms actually function.

Exercise 23 [Creative] Design a social media platform specifically architected for adolescent identity development, applying the principles of Erikson's moratorium period. What features would you include? What features of existing platforms would you deliberately exclude? How would you handle the tension between privacy (needed for genuine exploration) and the social feedback that is also valuable for identity formation? Present your design as a product specification with rationale for each major feature decision.

Exercise 24 [Creative] Write two contrasting "typical day" narratives: the first for a 16-year-old in 1995 (pre-social-media), the second for a 16-year-old in 2024. Focus specifically on moments of identity exploration, social feedback, and self-presentation. What is gained and what is lost in moving from the first experience to the second? What remains the same? What does the comparison reveal about the specific ways digital environments change (rather than simply amplify or diminish) the process of adolescent identity formation?

Exercise 25 [Creative] You are a therapist who specializes in adolescent mental health and sees clients who are struggling with aspects of their social media identity. Write a composite case study (anonymized, fictional) of a client whose identity development has been significantly shaped—in either primarily positive or primarily negative ways—by their social media experience. The case study should identify the specific mechanisms (from this chapter) at play and propose an evidence-based therapeutic response.

Exercise 26 [Creative] Create an "identity audit" worksheet for adolescents that helps them evaluate the relationship between their online persona and their offline identity. The worksheet should include: questions about the gap between online and offline self; reflection on which aspects of their identity they express online versus keep private; assessment of how algorithmic feedback has shaped their content choices; and a prompt for deliberate choice about what they want their online identity to be going forward. Make it accessible to a 9th-grade reading level.

Group Exercises

Exercise 27 [Group] "Platform design debate": Divide into groups representing different stakeholder perspectives (adolescent users, parents, mental health professionals, platform designers, and platform executives). Each group develops their ideal approach to social media design for adolescent users. Present the perspectives, identify points of genuine conflict, and try to negotiate a set of design principles that all stakeholders could endorse. What is left unresolved?

Exercise 28 [Group] "Identity mapping" exercise: Each participant creates a visual map of their current identity—values, interests, affiliations, aesthetic sensibilities, relationships—and marks each element according to whether it was primarily formed online, primarily formed offline, or shaped by interaction between the two. Share and discuss: What patterns appear? What surprises? What does the collective map suggest about the relative contribution of online and offline experience to identity formation in your generation?

Exercise 29 [Group] Conduct a "Marcia status" assessment of social media communities. As a group, identify five specific social media communities (specific subreddits, TikTok niches, Instagram hashtag communities, Discord servers). For each community, analyze: what identity does membership in this community signal? Does the community facilitate genuine identity exploration or does it tend to reinforce foreclosed identities? What features of the community produce exploration or foreclosure?

Exercise 30 [Group] "Ethics of intervention" exercise: Divide into teams. Each team is assigned one of the following scenarios: (a) A parent who has discovered their 14-year-old has a secret Instagram account; (b) A school counselor who suspects a student's online identity is leading them toward a harmful community; (c) A platform trust and safety team that has identified an algorithm pathway driving vulnerable teens to pro-ana content. Each team develops an intervention response and presents it. Discuss: What are the ethical tensions in each intervention? How should they be resolved?

Exercise 31 [Group] "Possible selves gallery": Each participant creates two social media profiles: one representing the "ideal possible self" they would most want to become, and one representing the "feared possible self" they most want to avoid. (These should be thoughtful and genuine, not mocking.) Gallery-walk the profiles, then discuss: What do the ideal selves have in common? What do the feared selves have in common? How do social media platforms and algorithms influence which possible selves are legible and achievable?

Exercise 32 [Group] Research and present on a specific "algorithm pathway to identity harm" that has been documented in academic research or investigative journalism (options include: the YouTube radicalization pipeline, TikTok's depression content loop, Instagram's eating disorder community recommendation, YouTube's fitness-to-extremism pathway). Each group should cover: the mechanism, the evidence, who was affected, what the platform did in response, and what the outcome was.

Applied and Extended Exercises

Exercise 33 [Applied] Conduct an informal interview with a person aged 14-20 about their experience of identity and social media. Develop a set of interview questions based on the concepts in this chapter (possible selves, looking-glass self, context collapse, algorithmic recommendations). With appropriate consent and ethical care, conduct the interview and write a 1,000-word reflection analyzing the themes that emerged in light of the chapter's framework.

Exercise 34 [Applied] Spend one week deliberately using social media in a way that diverges from your normal pattern—either more authentically (sharing things you would normally not share), more strategically (editing and curating more carefully than usual), or in a new community you haven't previously engaged with. Keep a daily journal tracking how this change in social media behavior affects your sense of self, your mood, and your relationship to the platform. Write a reflection synthesizing what you observed.

Exercise 35 [Applied] Analyze your own social media "algorithmic identity." Review your feeds on two different social media platforms and assess: what identity does the algorithm seem to have assigned to you? What content does it think you are interested in? What possible selves does it show you? Does the algorithmic identity match your own self-concept? Where are the gaps, and what do those gaps reveal about the limitations of behavioral inference as a basis for identity assignment?