Instagram has recently announced that it is trying out a new feature that will hide like counts from users. It will no longer display number of likes on posts to the public or to the user.
Now, we are all guilty of feeling a little rush when our pictures garner a significant amount of likes, and comparing our like counts to that of our peers. It doesn’t take much to realize that in no way is this healthy.
So, can I just say, thank you, Instagram. We need this.
For any of us who grew up without social media, we probably remember spending our earlier years focusing on creating tree-houses in the garden with our buddies and generally just having fun. However, we weren’t free of the fight for acceptance, we just weren’t given a numerical value of how successful we were at doing so. There wasn’t really anything that told us if we were cool or not – except possibly our siblings.
Today’s teens do not have the luxury of not knowing.
They literally have a pocket-device to tell them whether people like them or not. And while no one is safe from the trials and tribulations of teenage-hood and self-esteem is a never-ending battle way past your 20s, social media simply makes it harder.
More and more people are actually buying likes and followers, in order to appear to be more popular on the platform. But, the backlash of that, is that young men and women are consistently comparing themselves to one-another which, if someone has more likes on their selfie than you, is a total stab in the chest.
Tragic, but unfortunately accurate.
As human beings, our brains are hard-wired for love. We crave positive interactions with other human beings and we long for approval. What happens when we don’t get the approval? We feel rejection, discouragement and we dwell on the fact that a person or people don’t seem to like us very much.
Continual disapproval damages our brains and this can lead to more serious mental health concerns. When we gain the approval, we feel euphoric and accepted and the feeling becomes addictive and we recreate the pattern that gained said approval – it’s a cycle.
We need to allow our future generations to find their own way, and feel comfortable in their own skin rather than hindering them with algorithms that make them feel like they are not good enough.
We need to give them the chance to decide that they ARE good enough on their own, without being constantly chained to numbers.
They deserve this much.