Today LinkedIn has become a staple in the toolkit of the modern professional. Boasting 1 billion users over 200 countries, LinkedIn’s purported mission statement is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful (LinkedIn, n.d.). Whether LinkedIn actually achieves its mission statement is up for debate. Most recently the platform has been criticized for embellishing people’s professional ability (Moyer, 2023). Some have even gone so far as to say that it is cult-like and weird in the way in which it glorifies and worships work (Khan, 2024).

The platform allows employees to create a highly curated profile that functions as a virtual resume. Users of the platform can create connections with real-world colleagues or people they don’t know for the sake of networking, posting career updates, writing articles about professional development, post photos and videos and more generally project a marketable image of success to prospective employers on the platform. From an employer’s perspective, they are able to promote their company on the site via company updates and seek new talent by creating job listings.

First impressions would indicate that LinkedIn is a great way to network with others, promote your professional brand, highlight professional competencies and even find new roles suited to your particular skill set. Beneath the platform’s mirage of digital perfectionism, the structural incentives may cultivate less obvious harms to professional identity and wellbeing. Sherry Turkle (1995) argues that in online spaces, “people have compelling interactions that are entirely dependent on their online self-representations,” and that in cyberspace “the routine formation of multiple identities undermines any notion of a real and unitary self” (p. 267). LinkedIn is no exception. It is for this reason that I argue that LinkedIn reinforces performative professional identities that foster a toxic culture of comparison and conformity.

Throughout this essay I argue that the professional identities created on LinkedIn are performative in that they repeatedly project curated signals of success for prospective employers rather than reflect a genuine and authentic picture of who an individual is and what they believe. I will demonstrate the ways in which the platform creates a harmful culture of comparison much like those seen on social media platforms such as instagram and illustrate how the platform creates a culture of conformity where professional identities converge to become homogeneous. I will take some time to dispel likely rebuttals to the arguments set forth in this essay with a particular focus on the notion that LinkedIn is actually empowering and claims that LinkedIn empowers marginalized professionals.

Performative identity
Performative professional identity is a carefully constructed identity that meets the expectations of prospective employers. The self on LinkedIn is largely an extension of who individuals are on their resumes – Elle Hunt (2017) likened the platform to a “a giant, living, breathing resume, complete with bad formatting, plasticised optimism and synthetic relationships.” This idea of a performative professional identity meshes with Erving Goffman (1959)’s idea of the “presentation of self” where individuals perform roles to meet the expectations of a specific audience. Whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with performative identities, what distinguishes the professional identities of LinkedIn is the pressure to align and conform with strict corporate scripts. The problem is that these identities do not feel real, are unconvincing and yet the charade continues. On LinkedIn people sometimes express sentiments that they don’t necessarily agree with privately, such as exaggerating enthusiasm for workplace values and corporate culture. Over time this can lead to alienation amongst peers who can no longer tell whether an individual’s beliefs are genuinely held or strategically curated for self promotion. Despite these problems with authenticity, the platform promotes the kinds of posts which further entrench a culture of performative professional identity over authenticity. This kind of environment creates psychological tension between users where they find themselves stuck between the need to represent a professional image of themselves despite knowing that ultimately the projected image is at odds with who they truly are.

Culture of comparison
LinkedIn creates a toxic culture of comparison by encouraging users to continually compare themselves to their colleagues and other professionals on the site. Whilst this phenomena is familiar from other platforms like Instagram, the impacts on LinkedIn are no less damaging. On LinkedIn, user’s mostly see a feed of inspirational posts and success stories that promote unrealistic notions of success with almost no chance for critical reflection or an authentic rebuttal. The very design of the platform with its algorithmic promotion of popular posts rewards users who present a curated version of their professional lives through higher levels of engagement. The curated culture of LinkedIn is embedded in the platform itself by the way that LinkedIn’s algorithms prioritize posts that generate engagement and reactions. Posts that offer a more realistic or critical perspective are likely to be avoided by other user’s wishing to protect their own professional brands. The affordances of the platform make it easy to package an identity of success irrespective of authenticity. Posts celebrating promotions, certifications and entrepreneurial milestones flood the platform which leaves little room for identities that don’t conform to the dominant corporate ideals.. Although LinkedIn and more broadly professional culture markets itself as committed to diversity and inclusion, the reality is that it disproportionately rewards professional identities that fit into narrow templates of success.

Even the very language of LinkedIn, replete with cringe inducing buzzwords feels cultish and alienating. It centers professional worth in narrow, achievement-driven terms that leave little room for people who work quietly without fanfare. The reality is that many people have unglamorous, essential roles that don’t adhere to LinkedIn’s glossy success narratives and these professional identities are not only valid, but essential to the functioning of society.

It cannot be the case that the majority of people work extraordinary jobs imbued with grand narratives of success, yet LinkedIn would have users believe that were the case. The image of professional life on LinkedIn where every career trajectory is linear, every failure is a chance for redemption and everyone is “thought leader” in the making is completely fictitious. It is also actively harmful. Research shows that LinkedIn usage can intensify imposter syndrome – a recent study found that professional networking sites like LinkedIn increase self-focused attention which heightens imposter thoughts (Marder et al., 2023). These feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and imposter syndrome can ultimately lead to professional burnout. When a platform pits users against each other based on some arbitrary and historical ideas of what a professional identity is and looks like, it can lead to a sense of inadequacy that can make people doubt their own abilities. So rather than making” the world’s professional’s more productive and successful”, LinkedIn can actually impede on that.

Culture of conformity
The end result of LinkedIn encouraging such a narrow range of acceptable behaviors, values and versions of success is a toxic culture of conformity. It is this culture that prevents users from calling out exaggerated inspirational stories, sentiments they find offensive or claims that are just objectively incorrect.
This culture of conformity homogenizes professional identities into bland, marketable and risk-averse versions of ideal employees. It defeats the purpose of users having a profile in the first place. If everyone on the website is amazing at what they do, go from strength to strength and is tracking linearly either everyone is the best candidate or they have all been made into compulsive liars by the demands of the culture of conformity enmeshed on the platform.

A social network consisting of 1 billion workers sounds like fertile ground for organizing collective action for better working conditions or calling out unethical practices. We have seen the role social media can play in bringing about social change in the Arab Spring, the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter. Yet LinkedIn remains silent. So what makes LinkedIn so different? The answer lies in the structure of the platform. Users sign up for the platform with their real names and visible associations to their current and prospective employers. Their ability to earn an income is directly tied to their professional identity or “brand”. Speaking out against injustice, challenging unethical corporate decisions and even attempting collective action risks being seen as “unprofessional” and could jeopardize prospects of future employment. On LinkedIn, conformity is not just encouraged but it becomes an economic survival mechanism. Users quickly learn that creating a non-controversial professional identity is safer than risking genuine expression. So in this sense, visibility on LinkedIn is not really freedom but is more of calculated performance under surveillance by the dictates of corporate ideals. This whole charade must inflict an emotional toll on user’s as they attempt to navigate the platform and remain vigilant about how every profile visit, post, comment and reaction could be seen by others and prospective employers.

People may argue that LinkedIn is ultimately a democratic platform in that it gives everyone a chance to showcase their unique talents, build a professional network and access opportunities. It can even provide underrepresented groups a chance for visibility and career advancement. Whilst I don’t outright disagree that some people have benefitted from the platform and that visibility can indeed help marginalized voices, I don’t believe that detracts from the fact that empowerment on LinkedIn is entirely conditional on how well you perform according to the demands of professional corporate culture. Even the “empowerment” offered by personal branding is hollow when it demands conformity as the price for visibility.

Conclusion
When survival is dictated by employability, it seems people will say and believe anything on LinkedIn if it increases their chances of economic advantage. It reflects a broader feature of late-stage capitalism where people sacrifice authenticity for marketability. LinkedIn amplifies these features and offers us a stark reminder that under the pressures of capitalism, identity itself becomes a product to be optimized and sold as a commodity. I will admit that the issues outlined here aren’t just a problem on LinkedIn. These are problems that also exist in the real world and prevalent in corporate culture and hiring practices around the world. LinkedIn clarifies these tendencies and removes away the illusion that authenticity or diversity is truly valued in professional life. This is a shame for anyone who truly believes that diversity of thought and experience genuinely contribute to innovations that drive society forward. The platform shows how individuals not only sell their labour but also their identities in the pursuits to survive economically. It is for these reasons that I argue that LinkedIn reinforces performative professional identities that foster a toxic culture of comparison and conformity.

References:
LinkedIn. (n.d.). About LinkedIn. LinkedIn. https://about.linkedin.com/

Moyer, T. (2023, April 11). LinkedIn is the worst form of social media — here’s why. The Michigan Daily. https://www.michigandaily.com/opinion/linkedin-is-the-worst-form-of-social-media-heres-why/

Khan, C. (2024, March 28). Why has LinkedIn become so weird? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/27/why-has-linkedin-become-so-weird

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. Simon & Schuster.

Hunt, E. (2017, June 9). LinkedIn is the worst of social media – should I delete my account? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jun/09/linkedin-is-the-worst-of-social-media-should-i-delete-my-account

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books

Marder, B., Javornik, A., Qi, K., Oliver, S., Lavertu, L., & Cowan, K. (2023). Does LinkedIn cause imposter syndrome? An empirical examination of well-being and consumption-related effects. Psychology and Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21926