Social Media Metrics and Our Self-Esteem
In today’s digital age, society is completely consumed by social media. Whether it’s sharing a photo of yourself with the hashtag #selfie or posting a picture of your lunch, social media platforms are used to create and share content with a network of people.
With social media apps becoming a more significant part of our everyday lives, it appears as though these metrics are affecting our sense of self-worth. Social media metrics are data that provides a user with insight into their social media performance. This means follower interaction (likes, comments and shares), page views, post reach, messages, and the increase or decrease of followers over a span of time. People can now install applications on their phones that easily shows them social media metrics, but based on the majority of people I know and engage with, they’re mainly using these apps to check who is unfollowing them.
So many people now let their follower count influence their sense of self-worth. A lot of people worry about their “ratio,” which essentially is the ratio between how many followers they have and how many people they’re following. If they have hundreds (or even thousands) more followers than they are following, then it’s a “good ratio.” If someone follows more people than the number that follows them then it’s a “bad ratio.” For instance; I have a friend who is completely consumed by social media, mainly Instagram. She has about 2,000 followers and only follows approximately 300 accounts. Lately, she has been stressing about how her “ratio is bad” and that she “needs to unfollow a bunch of people to make her ratio better.” REALLY?! She’s seriously worried about following too many people because it appears bad??? I think it’s ridiculous. And yet, I am completely biased because I have also fallen into this weird social media norm.
Without really realizing it until now, I subconsciously follow fewer people than the number of people that follow me. This is mainly because I can’t be bothered to follow hundreds of accounts to fill up my news feed, I just follow the accounts that have content that I actually care to see. However, sometimes I notice myself looking at my “ratio” and wondering if I should unfollow some people. Then I snap out of it because I try to not let social media consume me the way that it consumes a lot of people that I’m close with.
So many of us are now positively or negatively affected by our post performances. If we post something online that is really well received (has more follower engagements than our average posts) then we somehow feel happy, or rather pleased. However, if we post something on social media that doesn’t perform as well as it usually does then people tend to overthink their posts, stress out about them and this might even result in them deleting the post all together because they don’t want an underperformed post to be on their page. These metrics are negatively affecting our overall understanding of value: society believes that a large number of likes, comments and followers means that you are important and significant.
Another thing that bothers me is how somebody’s post can affect another’s self-esteem. If you see an Instagram page or a YouTube channel with a bunch of really nice content that portrays the “perfect life,” then their followers will most likely start comparing their lives to them. I’ll admit, I’m guilty for this too. I used to compare myself to so many people online that my self-esteem completely dropped, and I was insecure about everything. Then I finally thought about it and it makes absolutely no sense; these people are just posting the content that they want us to see. They’re not going to post an ugly picture of themselves or a video of them fighting with their loved ones because they don’t want us to see that imperfect part of their lives. Take Essena O’Neill for instance: a once-famous social media influencer who deactivated all social media accounts because it had a lot of negative consequences for her. She posted a video on Vimeo (but since then all videos have been deleted) where she says “social media isn’t real. It’s purely contrived images and edited clips ranked against each other… and it consumed me.”
Now I’m not saying that social media affects everyone like this, but there are some potential societal consequences of carelessly valuing social media metrics that all tie into self-esteem issues. As discussed above, society is experiencing a constant decrease in self-worth and value. I know that a lot of my insecurities were developed from using social media, and I know that a lot of people can say the same. Users that are valuing social media metrics and letting them affect how they feel could potentially develop mental illnesses, such as anxiety and depression. One of my best friends from my childhood let social media consume him in a way that his mood was dependent on how well his posts were received by followers. He developed anxiety and now struggles with panic attacks, sleeping problems and even heart palpitations, all from using social media. He’s even publicly admitted this to all of his followers, and as a result he deactivated his accounts (which thankfully helped his overall health).
Don’t get me wrong, social media metrics are great tools that users can use to help build their businesses and promote their goods and services (specifically actionable metrics). Social media is an amazing thing and I absolutely love using it; I feel like I have been able to express my creativity and share content that I’m proud of with the people that follow me. In recent years, more and more people are spreading awareness about how social media can create false images of people, therefore users are trying to appear more raw and real, which is incredible. I think that if society can learn to not let social media metrics affect their self-worth then these metrics will be properly used for what they’re designed to be used for: business. I know it’s easier said than done, but with the increasing spread of awareness I think it could positively affect society in the future.
Sources:
Jackson, D. (2016). “All of the Social Media Metrics that Matter.” sproutsocial. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-metrics-that-matter/
Kircher, M. (2016). “Where Are You, Essena O’Neill?” New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/11/esenna-oneill-one-year-after-quitting-social-media.html
