A millennial’s battle with digital approval

Contributed by Aida Murad: US & Jordan-based artist, blogger and start-up adviser

If I could go back in time to my younger self, I would advise her on many things. I would tell her that life is often hard, and that although (most) people are kind, not everyone will love her. Rather than seeking external gratification, I would tell her that the whole affair really starts and ends with her alone. And that begins with establishing a strong foundation of inner worth.

Today’s world has changed the dynamics of how human beings interact, how we discover who we really are and how we celebrate or destroy that. It is common knowledge that humans are communal beings who strive to achieve a sense of belonging, approval and love. Traditionally, people attained this by deeply integrating into their local communities but today those dynamics are changing. More women commanding the workforce; families live countries apart and for many, that means they rarely get together face to face; and more people than ever are found alone behind a screen rather than socializing in person.

Approval, belonging and love are core human emotional needs, but in this age of instant viewing, people learn at the press of few keys whether they belong or are approved of or not.

This change has caused us to establish (and maintain) several identities: our professional, familial, social and with social networks — our digital identity.

So I found myself asking, how is our digital identify being shaped and how does it impact our sense of worth? Is the sense of online belonging an illusion or real? And how we can manage virtual ‘likes’ and dislikes while embracing who we really are?

The digital world is a double-edged sword. It can be used to amplify our sense of inner worth or destroy it: it all depends on where one’s sense of self stands offline. My own entry into various social media networks made it clear how bad my sense of inner worth has sometimes been: in the beginning, I often found myself posting a picture only to check obsessively to see if had been ‘liked’, asking myself subconsciously was I seen, approved of and loved? In a matter of seconds, we get a stamp of approval by the simple click of a ‘like’ button, or an apparent rejection for not having been on the instant receiving end of one.

As I witnessed the power of the ‘like’, it made me question what does a ‘like’ even mean?

Levels of digital activity are changing our behavior and habits online and offline. Offline we are increasingly losing our ability to concentrate due to compulsively checking our phones, regardless if they buzzed or not. A 2015 Gallup poll of about 16,000 adult smartphone users found that half check their phone a few times an hour (41%) or every few minutes (11%). Smartphone owners aged between 18–29 had higher figures where 51% checked a few times an hour and 22% checked every few minutes. I’ve seen people in meetings open their Instagram and ‘like’ pictures mid-meeting. Did they even read the post and look to see who was in the picture? Or was it a mindless (now instinctive) act of double tapping? It’s hardly a surprise that there is huge growth in businesses set up to ‘like’ and ‘follow’, to help individuals, brands and businesses gain more visibility and ‘love’.

This makes me ask another question: does a ‘like’ today even have the value it did when the concept was first introduced in 2009?

Take a moment now to think how much time you invested in posting that last picture. Many people invest significant time crafting a single post, taking hundreds (yes, hundreds) of selfies to get that perfect ‘shareable’ shot, taking considerable time to find the ‘perfect’ filter, then more time again to find that ‘catchy’ caption. I’ve got friends who after all this invested time will delete a picture if they haven’t received enough ‘likes’ within the first half hour.

An experiment at UCLA’s Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center showed that teenagers are responding to peer influence online and offline, where their behavior changed based on the already present ‘likes’ of a post. The study showed it was less a case of actually liking the content of the photo (that drove someone to ‘like’ it) than being seen to fit in by ‘liking’ what had already been overtly approved of. I categorize this digital peer pressure as the modern-day popularity contest.

I know that receiving ‘likes’ feels good. There is a psychological high that we get from posting content and receiving people’s approval virtually — which is oddly enough the same effect we get from eating chocolate and winning money, according to a study published in Psychological Science. However, the opposite effect (low level or total lack of ‘likes’) can impact our mental health detrimentally as we deem ourselves somehow not good enough.

So how do we balance this so as not to be at the mercy of the ‘likes’ and approval of people — many, of whom you will never even meet offline?

Ultimately it comes down to how you value your inner worth. People with a strong sense of self — who have a purpose, who know who they are and what matters to them — are less impacted and so protect themselves from seeking endless external approval (whether online or offline).

The habits I use to foster a positive relationship with my digital identity, to equip myself from not being crushed by online reactions are based around being able to answer these two essential questions:

1) How do you feel about yourself offline? If you do not like how you look (for example), then regardless of the number of ‘likes’ you get to a photo you’ve just posted, they will only ever give a temporary boost of confidence. For it to be sustainable you must be able to stand in front of the mirror offline, and accept what you see. Only with a healthy offline mindset can you have healthy interactions online.

2) What is your ‘why’? Live intentionally and post intentionally too. Understand that you cannot really ever fully measure your online impact (no matter what sophisticated analytics will tell you) since in some cases, the very people you want to reach are sometimes the most silent. Impact should never be only ever measured in the number of ‘likes’: that’s just one unit of measurement. Don’t forget clickthrough rates, bounce rates, reshares and personal messages — because the volumes of ‘like’s’ simply don’t indicate any level of commitment or meaning which you can quantify.

Fundamentally, knowing who you are, what matters to you and where you want to go in life constitute the first steps towards establishing a strong sense of inner worth. What follows then is living that out: establishing the appropriate daily habits in your thoughts, words and actions as you go between both the physical and digital worlds. ‘Likes’ and approval from others are a nice to have. But they are not the solid foundations for a strong and healthy sense of self.