Psychological impact of Social Networking Sites: A Psychological Theory Charita B. Lasala Regina P. Galigao Jufil F. Boquecosa College of Arts and Sciences University of the Visayas chati30_lasala@yahoo.com.ph Submitted: August 5, 2013 Accepted: November 10, 2013 ABSTRACT The preponderance of social networking sites such as Facebook, Youtube and others, have altered the way in which people interact socially in the real world. In fact, much more can be said about the impact of these modern technologies on the basic structure of human personality: the id, ego, and super-ego. The paper proposes a psychosological theory that modifies Sigmund Freud’s (1923) basic relationships and interactions of the id, ego and super-ego in his Psycho-analytic Theory. It is claimed that an individual’s engagement with virtual reality (social networking) portends a segregation of the super-ego from the id and ego. In a virtual world, social interactions are not constrained by societal norms and standards (super-ego) so that the tendency is for the id (instincts and drives) to merge with the ego (what is real) and they become indistinguishable. The sociological implications of this theory are also explored in this paper. Keywords: psychoanalytical theory, psychosocial theory, id, ego, super-ego I. INTRODUCTION Prior to the dawn of modern computers and the worldwide web, Freud’s (1923) psychoanalytic theory served as a cornerstone of psychology and the analysis of the structure of human personality. Freud believed that personality has three structures: the id, the ego and the super-ego. The id is the structure of personality that consists of instincts. It is totally unconscious and has no contact with reality. The ego is the structure that concerns with reality and is considered as the “reasoning” and “decision- making” part of personality. Both the id and the ego have no morality, an aspect of the personality taken care of by the superego. The superego is often referred to as the conscience. The rapid and accelerated developments in information technology have changed the way in which people do things, pervading all aspects of life. The invention of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Mail and others, paved the way for a virtual human interaction cutting across geographic, time, race, and socio- economic boundaries. Thus, human civilization is now characterized as a civilization living in two worlds: the real world and the virtual world. This state-of-affairs is very much different from the world perceived by Freud (1923) and Jung (1948). Consequently, it is not surprising that personality theories were crafted and developed when the world was a simpler world, has to be refined and enhanced to explain what modern human beings are experiencing. In cyberspace, Boyd and Ellison (2007) UV Journal of Research 2013