What is digital identity?
Digital identity is more than an account name, profile picture or collection of personal data. From a psychological perspective, digital identity can also refer to the way a person represents, experiences and expresses the self in digital environments.
A digital identity may be closely connected to the person’s offline identity, may emphasise selected characteristics, or may represent qualities that are difficult to express in everyday life.
Digital self-representation
People represent themselves differently across digital environments. A professional profile, social-media account, game character and customised avatar may all represent different aspects of the same person.
The important question is not only what the representation looks like, but also how the person relates to it. Does the person recognise it as part of the self? Does it influence behaviour? Does interaction through the representation affect how the person understands themselves?
Customisation, control and self-presence
Two processes are particularly important in digital identity use. Customisation concerns how people create and modify their digital representation. Control concerns how they regulate its actions, behaviour and interaction with other users. These processes may contribute differently to the psychological connection between a person and their digital representation.
Self-presence describes the extent to which a digital representation is experienced as connected to the self. This connection may involve the body, emotions and identity. A digital representation may therefore become psychologically meaningful even when it is visually very different from the person using it.
Why digital identity matters
Digital environments are becoming increasingly important spaces for social interaction, learning, work and development. Understanding digital identity helps us examine how people adapt to these environments and how digital experiences may influence behaviour beyond them.
This page supports the wider Cyberpsy programme on Adaptive Digital Identity Development and the simulation environment. Also see our short article: What Is Digital Identity?.
Visual references for digital identity
Digital representations can take clearly different forms. The examples below show how identity may appear through distinct characters — from human to troll, vampire, daemon, orc, lich, elf and gargoyle — while remaining psychologically linked to the person who uses them.
