#WOKE
How are social media metrics affecting our sense of self-worth? By extension, how are they affecting our overall understanding of value? What are the potential societal consequences of carelessly valuing social media metrics?
In many ways social media has changed the way we look at life. From the way we interact with others to the ways we look at ourselves. The constant need to send a snap or double-tap an Instagram post or send a tweet has consumed much of the current generation of social media users. To some social media is a fun pass time that is meant to entertain its user for a short while. While others get exceedingly invested in their social media world and the interactions that occur within. This goes the same for businesses as well, as many of them are dependent on their social media activity and how people are interacting with it. Here it will be discussed how those social media metrics such as tweet activity, snapchat streaks, and Instagram likes continue to affect those who depend on them.
To start there are many people who do not see the metrics illustrated by social media as important, and therefore do not allow social media to affect their sense of self-worth. These people are the ones who are only on social media to entertain themselves by surrounding their profiles with things that they find interesting. They often do not care to look at their tweet activity as such metrics are not interesting to them and they are affected by social media the least.
Other people however, can take the information provided to them by social media and project their own self-worth onto it. Some people consider their success by how many likes their Instagram picture has or how many favourites and retweets their tweets get. This can be dangerous as there is a lot of issues of insecurity that can come about as a result of relying on other people on a website to tell you how much you are worth. This issue is one that many people can look at and not think of as a major problem but unless you are in the shoes of someone who is dependent on what other people think of them you don’t know how harmful the act can be.
This is demonstrated in the dramatic Netflix show Black Mirror in the episode “Nosedive”. This episode features Bryce Dallas Howard playing a character named Lacie in a world where social media is heavily integrated into daily life with people rating each other based on social interactions. In the episode the majority of characters are portrayed as highly insecure and extremely dependent on what rating they have.
This is a highly satirized version of the world in which we live in as there isn’t a real rating system based on people but the context of living through social media metrics is still shown to be a dangerous way to live. It also shows a potential outcome of people caring too much about their social media metrics. The creator and writer of the show Charlie Brooker describes the people living in the show’s world as “everyone is a little bit heightened and false because everyone is terrified of being marked down because the consequences of that are unpleasant”. This is significant because it holds a lot of truth on real world issues of holding the value of social media metrics in such high regard. If people who are invested in their social media as a means of identifying their self-worth they may become afraid of doing anything that could jeopardize their own social media presence and in turn their own self-worth.
There is a business side to this as well. Virtually any business that exists on social media is in some way dependent on their social media metrics as a means to make money. If their tweets are not gaining activity then they are not connecting with their audience. So in a business setting it is important to base success on their social media metrics whereas in a social context it becomes a much different issue.
So in conclusion, the issue with people putting too much emphasis on their social media metrics is that people who don’t know the person in question could end up holding power over their own feelings of self-worth. This is a dangerous problem considering the insecurities and other feelings that can go along with not controlling your own self-worth.
