Real life isn’t always a perfect photo op.
We’re all fully aware of this, but social media has convinced us to pretend that it is.
We let our food get cold while we take artsy photos to post online. We miss the play of the game while trying to take a photo.
We water down even the biggest events in life – birthdays, graduations, weddings – by watching them through our phone screens.
We can’t fully enjoy our new jobs, new houses or new cars until we share them with our online “friends” and followers.
It’s no longer our own opinions and feelings that frame our lives, but what other people might have to say about them.
Our society is conditioned to evaluate our experiences based on one, easy quantifier – the number of likes.
It’s clear to many of us how damaging this can be to our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. The people behind social media platforms realize it themselves.
Instagram announced last week that they would now give users the option to hide the public “like” counts on their photos.
The company, under the umbrella of Facebook, has been testing hiding the “like” counts for more than a year in an attempt to “depressurize” users’ experiences.
It was apparently “beneficial for some.”
What I find more interesting is that it was “annoying to others.”
A statement from Facebook and Instagram indicated that some people want to use like counts to gauge what is trending and popular in society. Other articles cited “influencers,” who make a living by advertising or endorsing products on their accounts, who said it damaged their business.
I think we’re simply addicted to the validation that little number provides.
We love the elation that comes with comments and likes (even when they’re hollow) so much that we’re willing to bear the devastation when they’re missing.
It frightens and saddens me just how quickly we translate these reactions from our photos to ourselves.
Someone didn’t like my photo, so they must not like me.
In a world that revolves around likes, if they didn’t like me – am I even worth liking?
Rapid advances in technology have allowed us to be more connected to one another than we’ve ever been before.
Still, we feel lonely, unloved and desperate for approval from the millions of people we’re connected with.
Instagram officials said they are working with experts to “better understand how to empower people, build self-awareness and shape a more positive experience.”
Maybe hiding likes is a step in that direction.
But in a culture that’s marked by comparison and artificiality, how many of us are going to give them up?
-Kayleen Petrovia is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.