Privacy allows identity to develop without constant public feedback.

Anything done in front of an audience gets shaped by the audience. Opinions, taste, beliefs, and the sense of who you are all form more honestly when they are not being scored in real time by other people’s approval. Constant feedback pulls development toward whatever gets a good reaction. Some part of becoming yourself has to happen unobserved.

Keep something you are working out to yourself for a while, a view, an interest, a change in direction. Let it settle before it meets opinion. What survives that private stretch is more likely to be actually yours.