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Why Do You Have Multiple Accounts on Facebook?

A Qualitative Study

Chin Hoi Tung Jojo

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

htchin3-c@my.cityu.edu.hk

Abstract

Currently, researchers and practitioners have observed that many people have deployed

multiple accounts on one social media platform. Although previous studies have investigated

social media users’ motivations, attitudes, and behaviors in relation to technology adoption,

self identity, and impression management, relatively less attention has been paid to the

phenomenon that a user creates and maintains multiple accounts on one social media

platform. This study examines how and why young adults create and maintain multiple

accounts on one social media platform. Using a qualitative approach, this study discusses

reasons behind that millions of people use multiple social media accounts with great depth.

The results of this study indicate that people use multiple accounts mainly because they want

to enhance impression management. This study proposed three main dimensions for

impression management that the users use to maintain multiple accounts: Self-disclosure,

Habitual Management and Self-Identities. The positive and negative consequences of

maintaining multiple accounts are also discussed. The present study contributes to the social

media literature by illuminating user behavior for impression management through multiple

accounts. The novel findings provide insights for social media users and designers into better

strategies to effectively manage their self-image and identities online.

Keywords: Impression management, multiple social media accounts, self-disclosure,

habitual management, self-identity

1. Introduction

How many social media accounts do you have on any social media platform? Do you have

duplicated or multiple accounts? Recently in November 2017, “Facebook has admitted up to

270m users are fake and duplicate accounts, in which 10% of these accounts are duplicates of

real users, almost doubling its estimate of 6% from last quarter's results (Titcomb, 2 Nov

2017).” For those accounts, Facebook CFO David M. Wehner explained they were used by

the same person which represent real activity and engagement on Facebook (Morris, 4 Nov

2017).” Duplicate accounts might include users who forgot their old login details and created

another account and users who maintain private profiles to hide information from others. For

this research paper, the later group of users will be focused.

Instagram has another approach towards multiple accounts. They introduced multiple

accounts feature in 2016, so that users might maintain more than one account used for various

purpose ranging from home, hobby and work on the same device without logging out each

and every time (Narayanswami, 9 Feb 2016). These articles suggested that many people have

deployed multiple accounts on one social media platform. Therefore, this study will examine

how people, especially young adults, utilize multiple social media accounts on one media

platform for impression management. The focus on this research is on the users themselves,

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rather than from the viewer’s perspective. The topic of multiple social media accounts/

duplicated accounts are important, because there is not a lot of paper related to this topic in

the past. And with the increasing popularity of social networking sites, it has become

increasingly commonplace for users to reveal their identities in order to show their online

presence to their real-life Associates (Hawkey, 2009). And now, due to technological

advancement, people can utilize multiple accounts to present themselves on social media.

It has been found that people use social media to present themselves in front of different

audiences offline, and now they can utilize multiple social media accounts for impression

management and self presentation online. In this study, the following questions will be

examined:

(1) How do young adults deploy multiple social media accounts on one platform for

Impression Management?

(2) What are the reasons behind that millions of people have to use multiple social media

accounts?

2. Literature Review

Social media accounts are broadly used to refer to web sites that enable users to articulate a

network of connections of people whom they wish to share access to profile information,

news, status updates, comments, photos, or other forms of content (Steinfield et al., 2012).

They are important tools for managing relationships with a large and often heterogeneous

network of people who provide social support and serve as conduits for useful information

and other resources (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). Impression Management is subjective,

interviewees have different interpretations about their management on social media accounts.

Therefore, in this research, three main dimensions for impression management were

proposed, namely Self-disclosure, Habitual Management and Self-Identities.

I. Self-disclosure, in other words, one controls what others can see in his/her social

media accounts. In this dimension, how interviewees utilize multiple accounts to set

their private settings for self-disclosure will be focused.

II. Habitual Management, which means how one wants others to know about him/her on

social media in abstract. For instance, how interviewees utilize multiple accounts to

put filters on their photos or words for habitual management will be mentioned.

III. Self-Identity indicates how one wants himself/herself to become on social media.

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Figure 1. Conceptual framework

To have a better understanding towards the topics of relations between impression

management to self-disclosure, habitual management and self-identity respectively, several

related journals have been studied. Impression management was defined by Schlenker as the

“attempt to control images that are projected in real or imagined social interactions (Leary &

Kowalski, 1990). Individuals must present themselves in accordance with their social roles,

and make sure others positively evaluate their images. Thus, individuals need to adjust their

public images to audience expectations (Goffman, 1959).

For the relations between self-disclosure and impression management, privacy concerns have

in fact been found to relate positively to self-disclosure (Christofides et al., 2009). Through

impression management, people can choose disclosing or sharing self-provided information

(Rui & Stefanone, 2013). Privacy concerns might therefore motivate the choice of a specific

impression management strategy, such as creating content fitting to a professional image

(MacDonald et al., 2010). Habitual management is about what people will do when or before

they post or share anything on social media. For instance, filter the photos and captions, add

hashtags and etc. People spent time when presenting photos online, selecting a subset of “the

best” photos to upload, creating albums, “adding interesting captions”, and on Instagram,

“adding filters to make it prettier” (Zhao & Lindley, 2014). This was done with a view to

presenting content that others would appreciate, whilst also avoiding overloading them with

content (Zhao & Lindley, 2014). And this habitual management becomes the way to build up

identity on social media. For the relations between self-identities and impression

management, users may present different facets of that identity on different social network

sites (Skeels & Grudin, 2009). Since people constantly manage the impression they make on

others in order to maintain an ideal self image (Goffman, 1959; Leary & Kowalski, 1990), it

is natural that people are concerned about the impression they are making, especially when

they reveal their problems to others (Albrecht & Goldsmith, 2003).

3. Methodology

A qualitative approach was employed in this study. The design of study used is

Phenomenology. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Phenomenology is “the

study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view”.

Convenience sampling method was used, it is a type of non-probability sampling method

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where the samples in this research were taken from a group of people easier to reach. The

target group of this research are people age 18-35 who have multiple social media accounts in

a social media platform. We would like to find out the reasons for them to have multiple

social media accounts, how they management the accounts and the pros and cons of having

multiple accounts.

Face-to-face or phone interviews were conducted with 6 interviewees that have multiple

accounts on any certain social media platform. All interviews lasted for 30 to 40 minutes in

which they were presented the following key questions:

· Why do you have multiple accounts in any social media platform? · How do you manage all your accounts at the same time? · How do you think of likes and follows? · Have you ever mixed up your identity on social media? How? · How do you think of having multiple accounts? · How do you define yourself on or offline?

Interviewee Sex/Age Occupation Number of Social

Media Platforms

A F/23 Digital Marketer 7

B F/23 Public Relations 6

C F/20 Student 3

D F/23 Speech and Hearing Therapist 3

E F/24 Teaching Assistant 6

F M/29 Teacher 11

Table 1. Demographics of interviewees

4. Results and Analysis

4.1 Reasons for having multiple social media accounts on one social media platform

Each account has different purposes . All six interviewees have mentioned they have account

sharing their personal lives.

Personal life “For Facebook, one of the accounts is about my life, where my family, friends and

colleagues are my “friends” there. I will share photos and words with them.” ---A

“I will update my account regularly, so that my friends will know what is happening

around me.” ---D

“ I must post on every big day or festival, like birthday, gatherings. I like to tag my

friends so that they will like my photos, sometimes I intended to show to my friends.” -

--E

Hobbies

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Interviewees A, C, D, E has utilized their multiple accounts on their hobbies, like

cosplaying japanese anime, feeding their pets, following instagram online shops and

performing music.

“While the last instagram account is to share the photos of my cats.” ---A & “For

another instagram account, I have put the photos of my dogs, just for my personal

records. I have not set this account to private.” ---D

“I have also followed some companies like shops, but if these companies follow me, I

won’t follow back.” ---D

“Especially, I will post my performing videos onto this account, like playing drums,

singing and etc. I will use the hashtag of #drugclubber, so that I may find those I do

not know in real life, but who share the same interest as I do and appreciate what I

am doing. I will be extremely happy when those people like and appreciate my

videos.” --E

Fake Account

Among all 6 interviewees, only one of them claimed they have fake account in

between their multiple accounts. Interviewee F defined one of his accounts fake

because he did not put his real information onto this account and it is just for testing

the layout of his products.

“Lastly, account E is for testing, since sometimes I want to see the layout design.

This is a false account just for trial, because there must have at least 4 to 5 people so

that can activate your account to full version.” ---F

Others

Some unexpected reasons have been found, including for discount purposes, for not

letting people know their psychological test results, and deploying as diary, etc.

“The other account I have is a private account which has no friend. Usually, many

pages require you to share their info to two of your friends, so that you can earn

movie tickets or discounts in restaurants.”---B

“I use the private account as my diary. “ ---C

“For Facebook, besides my personal account, I have one more account for playing

games and doing the psychological tests. And I do not want my friends to know my

scores and results.” ---E

4.2 Management of all multiple social media accounts

Management of all multiple social media accounts include self disclosure of privacy and

other habitual management.

Set privacy

“I think there are too many people I am not familiar with in my facebook, so I have

not post on Facebook these days. Except changing my profile picture sometimes, I

have not updated for so long. I must not put anything related to my job on social

media, like I won’t update my career and education background on social media

accounts.” ---D

“I won’t post my family or relatives’ photos on my accounts, because they are not

willing to, oh, I won’t post sexy photos of myself because I have religion. I would use

the location function in Facebook before, especially some nice restaurants, theaters,

some special places. I won’t treat these as reducing my privacy, since these are all

public places. I just want to show to people that I have great fun in these places.”---E

“At the beginning, I did not set any privacy settings, so I can find my photos and

things in the past easily. I do not want the public to see them, so I set my account to

private. However, I found out that I can still find those photos by using search, so I

was thinking to disconnect some of my friends or directly shut down the account. So, I

have deleted most of the things in that account, and tried not to use it.” ---F

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Put filters on photos, captions and wordings.

“I will upload the same photo, but the wordings I use will be slightly different in the

two accounts.” ---A

“While for my musical account, I will beautify all my photos and especially my look.

I think it will be quite embarrassing if I post these photos onto my social account.” ---

E

The duration of time spent on multiple accounts

“For Facebook, I will spend more time on my Japanese Anime account than my

personal account, since I think that account can present the “realer” me.” ---A

“I will check my instagram accounts every day regularly, actually quite always. For

Facebook, I will check 3 to 4 times a day, but I think Facebook is not that popular

these days. “ ---E

Target audiences of the accounts

“ All my family and colleagues are added in my personal account, so I speak in a

more “formal” manner there.” ---A

“For my social account, I will pay more effort managing it since the followers are the

ones you know. I do really care how people see me and I hope to give a better

impression so I will write more and in details like what is happening..” ---D

Stalking others’ accounts

“Most of the time I spent on social media is looking at others’ accounts and I use

merely a short period of time to post my photos.” ---D

4.3 Account best-present yourself

Among the 6 interviewees, 3 of them (A, C, E) claimed that their hobbies and other

accounts present who they are better.

“I would share things happening in my life in my personal account very early on, but

I realised my family and relatives are my friends there, so it may not be that good to

express whatever I want to. So I started using my Japanese Animes account, where I

can be a “truer” me.” ---A

“I think my private account best-presents me, because no one will see my profile, so I

can say whatever I want to. For example, like I won’t post food onto my public

account, but it is okay to put in my private account without thinking too much to filter

or whatever.” ---C

“I think my musical account, because in that account, I can express myself most and I

do not care too much on how those people see me. I post everything I want to post.” -

--E

2 of them (B, F) asserted that there are no any account best presenting themselves

“I think I am kind of a “transparent” person, because I am quite a low profile

person.” ---B

Only one said that her personal account present herself the best.

“ Of course my personal account, because my dogs are not me, haha. And my dogs

are not my everything in my life. I think I put more of my life and good memories in

my personal account, so that I think those things can present who I am better, with my

friends, my family.” ---D

4.4 Accounts represent yourself or presenting an identity you want to be

3 of the interviewees think that their multiple accounts represent themselves or just

part of themselves.

“I think my account is presenting who I am, I know there are someone who is

mimicking others’ writing tone (文青) or dressing like someone they like.” ---D

“It is not a new identity, just part of me.” ---C

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“I think every of my accounts are part of my representation.” ---F

while 2 claimed that some of their accounts representing themselves and some present

an identities they want to be.

“I think both of them. For my personal account, it seems like I present an identity

that I made up myself. I have thought of everything I write before posting it to public.

I typed whatever I want directly in my Japanese Animes account, so I think it presents

a “realer” me. My personal account is still presenting me, but I have polished

everything first.” ---A

“ I think I am presenting myself in my social account, and I am creating a new

identity of myself in my musical account. I think it is kind of a new identity, because I

won’t show this side of myself to the public normally. Yet, I think this is the true

“real” me.” ---E

4.5 Upwards Drive

5 of the interviewees have experiences on “acting” like someone they want to be on social

media. The ultimate purposes for them to have a upwards drive are to have more likes and

for event promotions. Here were what they have done to enhance their upwards drive.

Coming up with eye-catching captions

“Sometimes, I do not think of what to type for my caption, but I want to have more

likes, so that I will come up with some sentences that are eye-catching.” ---A

Uploading photos regularly

“I became the committee of a society in university. I have to use those photos to ask

for more likes and some wordings for promotion. I am actually not those type of

person who is active on social media.” ---B

“Yes, my friends and I joined a volunteer service and we posted some photos and

graphics to promote so that more people can join.” ---C

Mimicking in using filters and angles

“ I think sometimes I will pose like others, like the angles i look at.” ---D

“Yes, I always want to use the filter and mimic the way others use. For instance, I

will try to imitate the other food and makeup blogs. I like those themes and styles.” --

-E

4.6 Express inner true feelings

Can better express inner true feelings in non-personal accounts (hobbies and

other accounts) than public account “ I think for my Anime account, 80 to 90% is who I am. And for my personal account,

because I deleted the emotions and true expressions, I think the caption there is more

likely to be narrative, but still 60 to 70% of who I am.” ---A

“My personal instagram account, because few people can see my post, so that I can

express and write more things. For example, to express myself and in some

circumstances, I will use foul languages but not much.” ---B

Not for expressing inner true feeling

“Like for my private account, I am not really recording my inner true feeling but I

may record some tiny things happened in my life, something that I would like to

remind myself.” ---C

“Actually it is not inner true feeling, I think it is more like to be descriptive rather

than something very deep. For example, I won’t put something negative on my

accounts and I think it is not necessary to put something deep there. I won’t express

my inner true feeling via social media, for me that’s very private. I will only express

my negative emotions via whatsapp or face-to-face with my true friends.” ---D

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“I think I won’t express my inner true feeling on both of my instagram accounts. For

my social account, mostly I will describe more than express my feeling inside, and

same as the other one.” ---E

“Account C and D are merely for business, so I won’t put my true feeling inside.

Account E is fake, so definitely no true feeling. I used to express my feeling in account

A, but I realised everything I say or I post can be found by people. I think if I put

some true feeling on social media, and when people later discovered, it may cause

some bad effects.”---F

4.7 Constraints on expressing inner true feelings

Usage of Foul language

“Most obviously, I will use foul language in my anime account, but normally I won’t

use foul language in my personal account.”---A

Target audiences and emotion expression

“For instance in facebook, since I added my boss, my colleagues, relatives as my

friend, I do not want to express negative emotions that much, so that they may think I

am a negative person.” ---B

“I will never post negative and sad things on my social media. I would like to

maintain a positive image because I want the others to think I am a positive person.

For me, I won’t post anything related to my anger or sadness.” ---E

Political or job background

“I used to post some photos of myself working somewhere, so that people won’t find

me if they know I am not in Hong Kong. But after Umbrella Revolution, I originally

want to share in Account B, it may not be so appropriate, it will just like the effect in

A account. Therefore, I stop the whole thing.” ---F

“For instance, politically, my relatives are for the mainland government, while I am

against it in the umbrella revolution. I won’t be that emotional to express on these

political issues. Or I think it is not so good to say foul language in front of my ex-

colleagues. It may not about the personal characteristics, but it is the impression in

my job and in my life routine.” ---A

4.8 Meaning of likes and followers

Number of people read my post

“When I see the number of likes, I will know around how many people read my post,

which makes me feel quite happy.” ---A

“I think likes mean how many people have seen your post. Yes, I do feel happier if

many people like it. If there is not many likes, I will feel like not a lot of people show

interest in my daily life. I am not actually pay too much attention or count the number

of like, but if those people we have met often and still like my photos, I will be very

happy.” ---D

Recognition and Appreciation

“I think number of likes is the representation of others’ recognition and

appreciation.”---C

“I think they are important to me. I think that giving likes mean they recognize and

know what is happening around me, showing how many of my friends care about me.

I think I care the number of followers more on my musical account, because I really

watch someone to see my talent on music, not for making money but to kind of like

“showing off” and hope to have a better recognition.” ---E

Do not care

“Before, I used to like to have more likes in my social media accounts. But now,

comparatively I didn’t use my accounts that often and frequently, so naturally the

number of likes and number of views will be reduced.” ---A

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“When I was in secondary school, I may care more, but not now anymore.” ---B

“I do not care too much on the number of likes. Because if there are too many likes or

many people donating, I will become busy. Due to my time management, too many

people like may not be a good thing. Of course, it will be a good thing if people like

the events. And for the selling account, because I am a close-network sales, I do care

on the number of like and repost, but at the same time, I worry too.” ---F

4.9 Mixed up identities

Three of the interviewees claimed that they have never mixed up their identities on their

multiple accounts because they can separate their targeted audiences. Yet, even for those who

have mixed up, they asserted that there are no any serious consequences.

Two of the interviewees claimed that they have mixed up their identities

“Yes, I mixed up my identities in the charity account and selling product account, but

because the content is not polarized so it is still ok. I think I mixed up my tone

because the target audiences are different.” ---F

“Yes, I have. I would delete those posts after 3 to 4 hours. I remembered once I was

scolding a person, I was so mad, and I posted at 3 am so not a lot of people viewed

this. I deleted afterwards. I have tried this several times already in both Facebook

and Instagram. After reading that, I am not sure why I was so emotional at that time

and I do not want to see those post anymore, so I deleted them.” ---B

4.10 Emotions

Interviewees have different emotions while posting on social media accounts.

No specific emotions

“I think I do not have any specific emotion while managing my accounts. But I feel

the most comfortable in posting on my Japanese Animes account because it is much

more straight forwards.” ---A

“I do not have much emotion on managing because I do not put personal things in my

accounts anymore.” ---F

Calm

“I think I will be emotional while I write, but after writing online, I will calm down.”

---B

Nervous and Excited

“because people will see what I wrote. They may know my life and my friends more. I

will refine my wordings for quite long, because I really do not know what to write on

my caption.” ---C

Positive

“I think what I have shared are the details in my life. There are many positive things,

like having dinner with best friends, hanging out, so I think they are just normal

things in my life, not counted as private matters. But on the other hand,whenever I

was sad, being scolded, something bad happened, it must be related to some private

matters that I do not want to share.” ---D

Anxious

“I think I have anxiety when writing post sometimes, because I am afraid I write

something that cannot help to build a good image of me. I worry about whether

people truly understand what I am writing, will they think that I am too naive or

things like that. On the other hand, I will feel happy when I am posting something

happy in my life and share with my friends, so I think it will enlarge the degree of

happiness.” ---E

4.11 Reflections on having multiple social media accounts

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Advantages of having multiple social media accounts

Have another channels to express

“You do not want to say some specific things to a certain group of people but still you

have to find a way to express. And because I have another account, I can do it in this

way. Like there are two “spaces” for me to express.” ---A

“I can express myself on them and have different group of friends in different

platforms.” ---B

Manage photos better

“I can use multiple accounts in different purposes and reasons, better manage my

photos. I like how it is that I got a place to record important and special things in my

life..”---C

“You may use different account to follow different people, so you can see more. And

because different accounts have different purposes, so you may write diary on your

private account, and you can look them back in the future.”---D

Maintain better relationships

“I think having multiple accounts is good, because the content is different on every

social media. Moreover, they can serve different purposes. You can maintain

relationships, showing off what you are good at, or expressing your emotions, and

can decide the target audiences for each account.”---E

Disadvantages of having multiple social media accounts

Time-consuming and bothering

“Managing multiple accounts is a bit bothering.” ---B

“And the more accounts you have, the more time you have to spend on managing

them.”---D

“I think for the bad side, it wastes my time in managing, quite time-consuming.” ---F

Hard to manage

“And I can imagine how complex it is if I have to divide my personalities to manage

all the accounts. I think I will express less in my public account since I can express in

my private account already.” ---C

May mix up identities easily

“People may mix up different accounts easily if some has added their colleagues and

some has not.”---D

Misleading due incompletion of self presentation

“I think it is quite misleading sometimes, like I posted some outdoor photos, my

friends may think that I am an outgoing person and I like nature. And when I posted

some gathering photos, people may think that I am very sociable and have many

friends. But you know actually we only have these gathering (with my secondary

friends) once a year, so the audience may just see only an aspect of me.”---C

5. Discussions

After conducting and analysing the interviews, interviewees claimed that their multiple

accounts are for various purposes, where the reasons of having multiple social media

accounts can be summarized as public accounts that related to personal life, while other

accounts including to share their hobbies like cosplaying Japanese anime, feeding their pets,

following instagram shops, performing music and so forth. There is one interviewee

mentioned he has a fake account, which is used for testing. Some other minor reasons are

looking for discounts, doing psychological tests and writing diary.

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How young adults utilize multiple accounts for self-disclosure?

As above-mentioned, to what extent young adults utilize multiple accounts for self-disclosure

means how one controls what others can see his/her social media accounts. This abstract

dimension can be measured by concrete indicators of privacy settings and custom functions

on one’s social media accounts. Self-disclosure is inversely proportional to privacy

awareness, in other words, the more one bewares of the privacy settings on social media, the

less information one will post. All interviewees have set their personal accounts private,

which shows that they have concerns on privacy of their personal life, and they have

autonomy to control what others can see in their accounts. Besides choosing an account to

public or private, privacy settings and custom functions on one’s social media accounts also

included changing profile pictures, updating career and educational backgrounds, uploading

photos related to family and work, deploying location functions, and most importantly,

looking for the past images on social media.

While for their hobbies and other accounts, like performing music, sharing interests of

Japanese Anime, or even for doing psychological tests, interviewees depend on the purpose

of the accounts and their willingness to choose to show their accounts public or private. One

of the interviewees mentioned she disclosed her hobby account to the public, she used

hashtag, so that she may find those she do not know in real life, but who share the same

interest as her and appreciate her musical and technical skills. In this way, she can enlarge

her social circle and express herself more. On the other hand, another interviewee asserted the

importance of privacy settings. He claimed that he did not set any privacy settings at the

beginning, and now he can still find his photos in the past easily. Thereby, on one’s hand,

utilizing multiple accounts enhance flexibility on having the autonomy to control their

accounts. Multiple social media accounts users can have a high flexibility to choose what to

put or not to put on various accounts, they can be better gatekeepers in protecting themselves

in privacy, on the other hand, they should strike a balance between setting their privacy and

expressing themselves easily in the ways they want.

How young adults utilize multiple accounts for Habitual Management?

How young adults utilize multiple accounts for Habitual Management implied how you want

others to see and know about you online. Habitual management is about what people will

regularly do when or before they post or share anything on social media platforms, and where

this habitual management becomes the way to build up identities on social media.

And this abstract dimension can be measured by concrete indicators of to what extent of

putting filters on photos, captions and wordings, how long users spent on multiple accounts

and what to present in front of a specific group of target audiences. There is interviewee

claimed that she will slightly change the captions even uploading the same photos on

different accounts. For another interviewee she said she will beautify all her photos and

especially her look.

Interviewees utilized multiple social media accounts may have better habitual management,

more alterations, flexibility and diversity in self presentation, and so as to control what others

to see and know about them online like by adding filters on photos and captions, choosing

their target audiences and so forth and have better impression management.

However, on the other hand, these habitual management on multiple accounts may cause

constraints to users as well. For instance, target audiences of different accounts play an

important role because as an interviewee mentioned all her family and colleagues were added

in her personal account, so she has to speak in a more “formal” manner there. At the same

time, she will beautify all her photos and especially her look on social media on her hobby

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account. That means, multiple accounts may help better presenting different parts of oneself,

but not helping in expressing themselves the way they want.

How young adults utilize multiple accounts for Self-Identity?

How young adults utilize multiple accounts for Self-Identity means how one wants

him/herself to be presented on social media. And this abstract dimension can be measured by

concrete indicators of to what extent of their upwards drive when comparing with others and

the level of self-expression and constraints. Personality is a factor that will affect what users

want to show to others online. Some interviewees said that she likes to keep a low profile, so

she did not update or deploy her social media accounts often. For self-expression, it has been

found out that the nature and purpose of creating a social media account is of paramount

importance, multiple accounts users who has an account related to their hobbies are more

willing to share their interests online as they would like to find those share the passion as they

do, and this has fulfilled the function of social media account that enable users to articulate a

network of connections of people whom they wish to share access to profile information,

news, status updates, comments, photos, or other forms of content (Steinfield et al.,2012).

Quite an opposite, users who merely want to use the accounts for other use like as an album,

looking for discounts, playing psychological tests or even creating fake account for testing,

multiple social media accounts may just bring them convenience and usually in these

accounts they do not accept any friends and followers and so cannot present who they are.

They are mainly those users who maintain private profiles to hide information from others,

according to Facebook on duplicate accounts.

For self-identities, only half of the interviewees think that their multiple accounts represent

themselves or just part of themselves, while another half think that multiple accounts present

themselves and at the same time present an identity they want to be. All of them said that

even they have multiple accounts, the combination of all accounts are not who they are in a

whole, they explained who they are all the combination the online and offline selves.

Most of the interviewees have experiences on “acting” like someone they want to be on

social media, this shows that they compare with other online and looking for an upwards

drive. The ultimate purposes for them to have a upwards drive are to have more likes and for

event promotions. It may be contradictory that even some of them verbally said they do not

care about the number of likes they received, but what they are doing are striving for ultimate

purposes physically on their multiple accounts, especially impression management to gain

more likes and promotions. And number of likes represents the number of people seeing your

post, showing their recognitions and appreciations.

For the constraints, including the usage of foul language due to target audiences, so users

may have to suppress their emotional expression. Political or job background of users is

another factor that suppressed their expression on social media, as one of the interviewee

mentioned he has used to work in a political party, facebook has the record of the photos.

Even though he deleted those photos, they can be looked back easily from others’ walls or

albums. For the sake of their future career and jobs, users suppress emotional expressions on

social media.

13

Figure 2. Research Framework

6. Limitations This study is qualitative and investigate only 6 interviewees. Convenience sampling method

was used, so there are the possibility of sampling error and lack of representation of

population. Moreover, we may have built-in bias that the designs the type of questions have

been asked may vary a bit because of how the interviewees responded.

7. Conclusion

The findings we obtained do suggest some general pattern of the interviewees utilizing

multiple social media account for impression management. Social media is a good platform

to express oneself and connect with those who share the same interests. Young adults utilize

multiple accounts not only bring convenience to their lives for private use and managing, it

also helps them to have another channels to present different part of oneself, managing

photos better, maintaining better relationships because one can express certain things on

certain specific group.

While for the cons, managing multiple accounts is time-consuming, bothering, hard to

manage, users may mix up identities easily, cause misunderstanding of oneself due to

incompletion of self presentation and cause negative emotions like anxiety and nervousness.

For self-disclosure, multiple accounts users have autonomy to control what others can see in

their different accounts, but users must strike a balance between expression and privacy

settings so as to protect themselves. For habitual management, multiple accounts users have

more alterations, flexibility and diversity in self presentation, at the same time, multiple

accounts bring constraints to users. For self-identities, multiple accounts enhance presentation

of different parts of oneself online but not for enhancing self-expression. Information and

activities on social media do not define one’s self-identity and self-worth. By combining all

the impacts above-mentioned, to a large extent, young adults utilize multiple accounts

enhance impression management in the 3 dimensions. Compare with those who has single

social media account, multiple account users are allowed to present their identities in a

diverse way and with higher flexibilities, but research findings also found that multiple

accounts are not beneficial to self emotional expression as online social media can never

present the whole person of who you are actually, but the combination of your online and

offline selves will.

14

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