Can Social Media Truly Be The Means For Our Self Worth And Social Validation?

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A Generation Of Only Self Portraits:

There are two platforms that offer us visibility and recognition that we crave. These two avenues gives us unlimited freedom to indulge in the concept that is core to our identity – us. And they are, Social media and selfies.

• We all want to make an impact in our own way. Selfies empower us because we can control how our self image is projected onto the world.
• We get to tell our story with the backdrop of a location, food or event and convey who we are.
• In the context of a permanent picture, we can change your glamorous perception of ourselves into a reality.
• The likes we get will further validate our self worth. (The opposite – not getting enough likes will have an equally disastrous result to our self esteem.)

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Here’s Why Social Media Is So Addictive:

When we cater to the pleasure of our senses, we’re engaging our brain at the most primitive level – the limbic system. Our behavior is motivated by extrinsic factors like likes and comments on our posts and our pictures. As a result, we’re keenly dependent on them for feeling happy and satisfied in our lives. Our advanced PFC (Prefrontal Cortex) is not able to regulate beyond the circle of pleasure and pain.

Read more HERE.

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Social Media Is Being Used For Virtue Signaling.

SnapChat, Instagram and Facebook are venues for group signaling. Signaling goods signal status and affiliation to other “like minded” monkeys. Signaling goods can be physical – handbags, watches and fancy cars. And, they can be virtual – political, religious, and tribal affiliations. Social media makes it easier to signal wealth via conspicuous consumption of goods like food, travel and clothing. Editorial outrage is a signaling good. News outlets have switched from facts to opinions and outrage. Social media has degenerated into a deafening cacophony of groups signaling and repeating their shared myths. ~ Naval Ravikant.

“Each little update – each individual bit of social information – is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.” ~ Alex Soojung Kim Pang on Social Media and its ambient intimacy.

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The Pressures Of A Virtual World On “Me”:

Being on(line) means – we must add value, always be available, be current and also flawless. While we perfect ourselves, we must also capture our journey on a public stage. We must belong in the world, in the big scheme of life. We must somehow matter.

There are two platforms that offer us visibility and recognition that we crave. These two avenues gives us unlimited freedom to indulge in the concept that is core to our identity – us. And they are, Social media and selfies.

And what more validation to that sentiment than a cell phone in our hands which seems to be in our control – after all, it sleeps only when you say so, doesn’t it?

Our self-worth can’t be determined by the number of times we show up on people’s feeds, stories & timelines. It’s time to ask ourselves, “Are we busy counting likes or impacting lives?”

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Truth About Technology – A Digital Literacy Project

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