You’re Worth Your Weight in Likes
You get on the subway train and look around for a spot to stand or an available seat to sit in. After a quick look around, you manage to find an open spot and sit down. You then reach down to your pocket for your phone and check your social media accounts to see what’s happening with your friends, family and acquaintances. After quickly replying to some comments you received on your recent Insta post and liking your friend’s newest Facebook profile picture, you decide to put your phone away. You scan the people sitting in front of you and then look around at the rest of the passengers on the train. Everyone’s heads are bent over their phones and the bright lights from their LED touchscreens illuminate their zombie-like expressionless faces. If it weren’t for the consistent rumble of the subway train thundering down the tracks and the robotic voice announcing the upcoming stations, you’re certain the train would be deathly quiet. You take a peek at some of the phone screens closest to you and realize a majority of them were on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. “What the hell is this?” You think to yourself, “Am I trapped in a Black Mirror episode?”
While some parts of my little short story above may seem a little out there, it’s not that far from the truth. When you hop onto a TTC train on line 1 during rush hour, you’re guaranteed to find a sea of faces buried in their smartphone screens. It’s also almost-always guaranteed many of them are on a major social media platform. In this day and age, it’s undeniable that we’ve let social media take over our lives. It’s also undeniable that the results of it are detrimental and will continue to have negative effects the more we emphasize the importance of social media.
Nowadays, social media is not only used as a tool for communication and marketing, but it is also being used to judge and determine one’s worth. From the number of likes you get on your Insta post to the amount of retweets on your witty remark on Twitter — many people, probably even yourself (perhaps without even really noticing), use the numbers of different social media metrics to measure your importance — your self-worth.
Are alarm bells going off in your head yet? Good. Well, I mean, not good — in fact, this is very bad. Young generations growing up in today’s society are being taught just how important their social media presence is and are letting social media metrics determine their self-worth. If they don’t achieve a certain number of likes on their Facebook profile or Instagram posts, they might feel like they’re less important than their peers, who might happen to have more likes, followers, or comments. This is horrible. Young kids and teenagers face enough media telling them how they should grow up to be (young girls and body image issues, young boys and masculinity issues, etc.), they don’t need even more pressure and another reason to feel worthless.
Quantity > Quality
How are social media metrics affecting our overall understanding of value?Social media metrics not only affects our sense of self-worth but it also affects our overall understanding of value by reducing it to numbers and something that is easily quantifiable. Our sense of value and self-worth should never be that simple as who we are as a person is much more important than the number of likes we receive or the number of subscribers and followers we have. However, that’s not the case today and the importance of social media is only going up.
Social Media — the New Drug
There have been countless studies and reports on all of the various negative effects social media has on society and the way we perceive ourselves. What’s equally interesting and scary is that research has found using social media is similar to using drugs. There’s mini highs, addictiveness, lows/comedowns, and withdrawals.
“It’s a reward cycle, you get a squirt of dopamine every time you get a like or a positive response on social media…It’s like a hit, similar to the way you feel when you have a drink. The social media like triggers that reward cycle and the more you get it, the more you want it (Cosmopolitan)”.
In the exact same article from Cosmopolitan, the author mentions, “a recent study confirmed the same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are also switched on when we see large numbers of likes.”
Social media is addicting enough as it is but the more society values social media and social media metrics, the bigger the potential societal consequences will be — in fact, it’s already starting to show — the various studies and research on social media effects prove the consequences already exist. The question is, how big will we as a society let the consequences be and will we stop inflating the importance of social media before we destroy all of our future children’s sense of self-worth?
Or will we all end up like Lacie from Black Mirror? Driven to insanity by our obsession of our “rank” on some app?
