Social media has  given us the power to construct our own “false reality” and identify with an illusion of something that we are not. This illusion serves as the basis for constructing our own identity and we use this decoy to align ourselves with an identification that is in conjunction with normative society.There are so many apps out there that can completely edit and change one’s appearance, so from a virtual sense it makes it difficult to know what a person truly looks like. As a result, getting “catfished” (being deceived by someone who is not who they appear to be) is now a prevalent outcome of online dating. Furthermore, social media deconstructs human interaction by breaking down the traditional forms of communication. In one way, it contradicts its principal purpose of connecting and communicating with many people by instead alienating ourselves from others. We communicate from our devices supplementing real interactions with virtual ones. Social media can cause one to become so absorbed by what everyone else is doing that it formulates a false reality for individuals to internally identify with. Baudrillard contends that the virtual takes the place of the real and is the “final solution of the real”.Technology provides us with an outlet to act and identify with something that is an alliance with our contemporary culture, but those false beliefs about who you can become internalized and believed as inherently true.  
Baudrillard’s critical analysis of the  modern social trends which is rooted in symbolism, is a  reflection of the nature of the postmodern condition. He problematizes the existence of the real and challenges the truth or objectivity of our identity. We as participants in this media saturated world fall to the negative effects of technology as completely consuming our interactions. It has made it so there is no longer a distinction between reality and its referent representation, there is only the simulacrum. His theoretical writings allow reality to be put into question. Has  everything  real in the world disappeared? Baudrillard challenges the existence of the real by suggesting that the real may have “only ever been a form of simulation”. This view has contradicting aspects to it because if everything is hyperreal or an imitation of real then there must have been “a real” at some point to copy. I think that he is aiming at the fact that we have simply lost touch with the real as a result of the novel technological advancements that can go beyond our human capabilities making everything function as a simulation.
