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The phrase “looking-glass self” was first coined by the sociologist Charles Horton Cooley in 1902 and describes this phenomenon, in which we actually define ourselves by our interactions with others. That mirror is magnified a thousand times in our modern world as there are so many points of comparison between ourselves and others. It can lead us off track. As the pioneering cyberpsychologist Mary Aiken, author of The Cyber Effect, puts it, “We spend all of our time investing in trying to understand our ‘self’ from the feedback from others rather than actually knowing who we truly are.
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