Social Media’s Impact on Our Sense of Self-Worth
Over the past couple of years, social media metrics has had a huge impact on our sense of self-worth. The amount of followers, likes, or views we get affects us so much that it lets us define our value and self-worth. Nowadays, people correlate someone having a low amount of social media metrics to meaning that the person isn’t as important, or as interesting. Whereas someone having a high amount of social media metrics has the opposite meaning. They’re seen as interesting and important. And based on that, people automatically assume that a person who has a high number of followers is more liked than a person who has a few followers. Therefore, with that view, we let social media metrics define our sense of self-worth.
We are constantly trying to get thousands of followers in the hopes that it will improve our sense of self-worth. Social media metrics also lead to loneliness, envy, anxiety, depression, and narcissism. Since we’re putting so much energy and care into social media, it makes sense that it would lead us to loneliness, because we’re seeing how other people’s lives are better than ours, or at least that’s what we think since we don’t get to see what’s actually going on in their lives and we only see what they want us to see, which is naturally only the positive things in their lives. Which also leads to envy if we’re not able to attain the same amount of social media metrics as someone else. All of this can lead to anxiety and depression because social media metrics have become so valuable that it can have a huge affect on someone who isn’t happy about the results of their metrics. On the other hand, if someone has really good social media metrics it can lead to narcissism because they can start thinking that they’re better than those who have less, and will have a higher sense of self-worth.
I think that carelessly valuing social media metrics will have negative societal consequences. Instead of looking at people’s actual skills and personalities, I think people will be judged more on their social media metrics such as the number of followers, likes, and views they have. It will lead to a society that cares more about their metrics rather than their real life, such as friends, family, and work. Which will then lead to an even worse affect on our sense of self-worth. If social media metrics are our only indicators of our self-worth, then people’s sense of self-worth will decline because not everyone is able to attain a high amount of social media metrics. Therefore, in order to preserve our sense of self-worth we need to devalue the importance of social media metrics and go back to defining our self-worth in a healthier and more attainable way.
