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Key points
- Digital permanence is a myth, but grappling with that may be psychologically challenging.
- Recognizing the impermanence of digital data can help us manage anxiety about our online identities.
- Our attachment styles may also affect how we engage with our digital selves.
- Digital identities should be used thoughtfully, to enhance, not define, our well-being and relationships.
For years, we were told that the internet would be our eternal archive: it was imagined that everything we post, upload and share would outlive us all. "The Web Means the End of Forgetting," warned headlines in 2010, and many people built their digital lives according to that advice.
As social media went mainstream, most users didn’t realize what early internet adopters knew: digital data isn’t forever. Many assumed their online identities would last indefinitely, shaped by articles like “How Facebook Lets You Live Forever (Sort Of)” in 2012. This illusion of permanence has profoundly influenced how we perceive and curate our digital selves.
Yet the perception of permanence in the digital world is proving to be a myth. Sites vanish, links die, and entire digital identities disappear. Some slowly fade, and some archives are wiped out in an instant. How does it affect us when the digital future we imagined is far more fragile than we thought?
Leaving old digital selves behind
As social media shifted from niche platforms to mainstream spaces, it evolved from casual, spontaneous posts for small networks to carefully curated content for a wider world. People realized they were being watched by more than just friends.
Impression management became about shaping an image for family, employers, and algorithms. Social media profiles turned into polished, public-facing records meant to last, rather than snapshots of day-to-day life.
This means we must adapt to the idea of many small digital deaths of our different digital identities. Just as parts of our real-life identities shift and fade through school, careers, and social circles and groups, our online roles and identities will also disappear. It’s not physical mortality, but a reminder that digital selves are just as impermanent.
Link rot and the decay of the online world
We’ve come to see just how unstable the internet really is. Entire websites, companies, archives, and users can vanish—sometimes gradually, sometimes in an instant.
One clear sign of this instability is link rot—the slow death of hyperlinks as websites are taken down, restructured, or lose hosting, leaving content inaccessible. For example, 72 percent of links to content from 1998 are dead and according to Pew Research, about 40 percent of links die after a decade. Digital decay is a feature of the internet; there are no guarantees of permanence online.
Psychologically, it’s tough to accept that digital content decays far faster than physical media. We’re deeply attached to our digital selves. The majority of people use social media daily, and the average person spends two hours daily using social media. Yet confronting the impermanence of these online spaces can be difficult.
Attachment styles and digital identities
Attachment styles, which describe how we form emotional bonds and expectations in relationships, shape how we approach trust and reliability. These styles, shaped in part by our early relationships with caregivers and in part by our adult lives, influence how we relate not only to people but can also be used as a lens to understand our relationships with our digital identities. We have a pattern of relating to our online identities that may be related to our underlying beliefs about people and the world around us.
Many of us operate with a secure attachment style, where we trust that our relationships and social environment are stable, safe, and reciprocal. For those with secure attachment, the assumption may be that these digital representations will also be stable, fair, and reciprocal. However, the terms and conditions typically say otherwise.
The fragility of digital media and records can disrupt our attachment to the online identities we construct and curate. The more invested we are in our digital selves, the harder it becomes to reconcile their impermanence. That realization can cause real anxiety that speaks to our understanding of the world and the importance, for many people, of digital identities.
Separation anxiety for digital accounts
Separation anxiety is a common experience in childhood, marked by intense worry and fear when separated from a trusted caregiver. This anxiety is a heightened version of normal attachment behavior, where a child’s concern for losing contact with a key figure becomes overwhelming, even leading to panic over anticipated or actual separation. While it's a natural part of development, it can escalate into a more severe form that causes persistent fear of loss and distress.
The concept of separation anxiety has clear parallels with our relationships with our digital identities. How many people would feel genuinely anxious at the prospect of losing access to their online social media accounts?
The fear of losing access to a piece of one’s digital identity can evoke anxiety much like losing contact with a valued relationship.
An existential crisis in digital identity?
How do we come to terms with the fact that our digital identities can be far more fragile and fleeting than our physical selves? With so much time, emotion, and thought invested in building online identities tied to a specific platform, it can be unsettling to realize that they can disappear overnight.
The internet, much like our social lives, is constantly in flux. But unlike human relationships, which have evolved over millennia, digital networks are shaped by current technology, corporate interests, and the physical limitations of data storage.
When digital identity plays a significant role in shaping your life, anxiety about your digital identity can draw attention to the fact that something is wrong. It’s a chance to rethink how to use the technology.
We can’t ignore the technology, but we can be deliberate about how we use online platforms and what parts of our identity and social relationships we choose to digitise. Digital spaces and relationships, like physical ones, are less permanent than we might wish.
The key is to recognize that the impermanence of the internet doesn't have to trigger an existential crisis if we treat digital spaces as useful tools for connections, not the core of our identity. Just as healthy social relationships rely on more than a single connection, our well-being should not be tied solely to one platform or profile.
Digital identities should enhance our well-being and relationships, not define them. Use them deliberately, so if one disappears, it’s not a crisis—just a small shift in how you interact with the digital and physical world.
References
Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the Extended Self, Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168.
Carvalhais, M., & Cardoso, P. (2023). Computational media and the paradox of performance. Journal of Digital Media and Interaction, 5(15), 31-42.
Levy, K. N., Johnson, B. N., Clouthier, T. L., Scala, J. W., & Temes, C. M. (2015). An attachment theoretical framework for personality disorders. Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne, 56(2), 197–207.
MacRae, I. (2021). Dark Social: Understanding the darker side of work, personality and social media. Bloomsbury.
Magnavita, J. J., & Anchin, J. C. (2014). Unifying psychotherapy: Principles, methods, and evidence from clinical science. Springer Publishing Company.
