Why I Hate Numbers…

Kasi McAuley
RTA902 (Social Media)
3 min readMar 15, 2018
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2017/01/both-hugely-uplifting-and-depressing-how-do-social-media-likes

Numbers and I have never really had the best relationship… In fact we have been at odds all of my life. Having ADHD numbers in math class seemed to jump all over the room rather than stay in my brain (except when the report cards came out, then I could never get the numbers to leave). My bank account causes me regular shame and anxiety, especially when it comes time to pay my bills. They say “age is but a number”, but I’ve always been at odds with my age- and hated being discounted because I was “too young”, and now I worry that i’ll wake up one day be “too old” to do the things I dream about. When I look at my life, I find it very fascinating how significant numbers are… our weight and height dictates our perception of self worth. Our IQ or GPA signifies how “intelligent” we are. For centuries, our society has been obsessed with numbers, and comparing these numbers against our peers. For many of us our perception of our own value comes from these numbers, and with the introduction social media the importance of numbers seems to have grown exponentially, do you ever feel like that?

According to scholars Nazir S. Hawi and Maya Samaha, as of January 2016 social media is “engaging close to one third of the world’s population”, with an annual increase of 10%. That is a pretty significant amount of people perusing Instagram and Facebook. But it makes sense, our society puts so much value on numbers- so of course we would embrace another way to measure ourselves against other people. just as the numbers on your report cards would prove to people that you are someone significant, Likes, comments, hearts, matches do the same thing. But the worst part is, social media has not replaced the significance of the “old numbers”, but amplified them. We can look and see how people react to our own pictures compared to peers, which may amplify body image issues, thus amplifying the significance of the numbers on the scale. We can share our biggest accomplishments with our followers, which in comparison can diminish our own. Studies show “60% of people using social media reported that it has impacted their self-esteem in a negative way”, which is very unsetting.

In today’s society value is determined by the engagement metrics on our social media channels. Whether thats our personal value, or even the value of our cultural contributions. I make jewellery, and find it very discouraging when I post what I believe to be a really interesting or unique piece, and nobody “likes” it. When the heart button is not pushed, it’s hard not to feel like a failure and its difficult to continue to posting on my business accounts, because I have the perception that my contributions are not good enough. This is a really dangerous thought, and I would hate for others to stop expressing themselves, or creating because they feel like their contributions are not valued. I would hate for people to stop loving themselves because they believe their body, or personality is not valued.

Numbers don’t seem to be anyone’s friend lately… but its so hard to ditch them when the world we know runs on them. So whats the solve? I think the best thing we can do right now is to continue discussing the negative effects of social media metrics, and banding together to encourage one another on things we cannot measure with numbers! Like compassion, empathy, love, creativity, passion, imagination, character, wit, resilience, humour… can you think of more?

allaboutlearningpress.com

Check out this cute article if you need a little encouragment…

--

--