You’re not how many ‘likes’ you get, you’re YOU
We talk about young people (in my case with Shift — young women) and the impact of digital technology, but some of my thoughts are not just relevant to young people, they are relevant to everyone.
I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for a while, trying to get my thoughts straight about what I really want to say and what I am seeing and hearing. I recently wrote another blog on well-being and made a commitment to spending less time on social media, but habits are hard to break and I find myself slipping back into old ways. This is as much a reminder to myself as it is a public blog about the importance of keeping social media in perspective.
I was messaging a young woman last week who had dropped off my radar. She responded to my question of ‘Are you ok?’ by saying ‘Yes, I’ve just been taking some time out, especially from cyberspace’. I thought ‘how smart’. When things get tough we often become insular and isolated but continue to go online. She, on the other hand, disconnected to think and figure out her future. How smart.
It seems to me that the pressing issues young people face are no different from those I experienced as a teenager:
Who am I?
How do I survive with having a broken heart?
Am I liked? Am I enough?
How do I deal with bullying?
Who will I be?
Same issues, but we now have to contend with the digital age. For example ‘Am I liked?’ can be characterised by how many ‘friends’ you have on Facebook. ‘Am I pretty? Am I enough?’ can potentially be measured by how many ‘likes’ your post gets. Discovering your identity no longer just happens in the real world, it happens online. It’s one and the same.
I wonder how much our identity is being shaped by what we see online? I wonder how much value we place on how many ‘likes’ we get? I can’t tell you how many ‘sexy’ selfies I’ve seen since the world of social media blew up. When I first began my work in young women’s well-being I delivered sessions on the truth behind magazine images. I would explain to young women on my Finding MY Place and Girl Power programmes that the images are manipulated using photoshop. I would play those famous YouTube clips that showed the cutting and cropping of celebrities body parts for the cover of magazines. In hindsight I didn’t see what was coming, that it was soon going to be too easy to add a filter, take 50 selfies pulling 50 different poses and pick ‘the best one’. I didn’t realise that in just a few years the same young women I had tried to educate would have the ability to DIY their own images with a few taps of the screen.
Some days I want to scream the following into my phone:
- ‘What you do and who you are is so much more important!’
- ‘You don’t need that filter — you are so unbelievably beautiful in every way!’
- ‘I wish you could see yourself how I see you!’
But it’s not my job to dictate and really how different is it to my mum saying to me at age 14 “You’re not going out looking like that. Your dress is too short and your face looks like a pancake”. Maybe things haven’t changed that much? Although now, it’s not just who sees you at a party, it’s out there in the online universe.
The one big difference I feel is the need for immediate validation. I mean, I dressed up hoping that some guy might pay me a compliment but that was a stretch for teenage boys face-to-face. Now, people can post a few emojis or comment from the other side of the world. How often do you post a photo and then check back 10 times to see how many ‘likes’ you’ve received? Be honest. No one’s judging you, it’s kind of how it is these days.
The question is WHY are we seeking the approval of others and in some cases people we don’t even know?
I guess where I’ve come to with all of this is that nothing else matters except how you feel about yourself. If you love yourself inside and out then no amount of positive or negative emojis will really matter. We are each born with a unique and special gift, that is to be YOU; So stop worrying about the number of likes your photo or post gets and get on with embracing the awesomeness that is YOU!
YOU are amazing! YOU are unique! YOU are beautiful! YOU are enough!
Tonight good advice is: Log off. Shut down. Keep being the very best you can be and know you are amazing in this world because you are you.
