Have you ever felt the guilty pleasure of posting something on Instagram and consistently refreshing as you watch the likes roll in? The rush of dopamine that gives you a second of confidence as your friends encourage you, and your peers appraise you for your physical appearance and/or your accomplishment.
You just posted something. You lock your phone and tell yourself you’re going to concentrate on your assignment, the show you’re watching, whatever it may be, but you just cannot resist the urge to check your phone and see who is giving your picture a double-tap. It’s a feeling all too common for the majority of us.
But it’s actually quite dangerous to your subconscious mind, and I’ll tell you why.
Over time, the more pictures you post and the more you evaluate people’s responses to those posts, it makes you subconsciously depend your value and worth based on the reactions of other people. Building those habits from early on can be a toxic mindset to have.
I had to spend time with a friend today whose entire life revolves around being in the public eye. And, unfortunately, I noticed in her behaviour that everything she did- she didn’t do for herself or for her happiness, but based around the analytics of how other people would respond to her life and her content. The moment you start to live your life for other people or feel the need to explain yourself, is the moment you lose. 10 Instagram followers or 10 million, if you depend your worth based on other people’s preferences then you live in a constant cycle that never allows you to win.
I read a post once that went something along the lines of: have you ever looked good in person, but then as soon as you go to take a picture, it turns out terrible and you automatically feel worse about yourself? A camera can be anywhere between 8- 120 megapixels (give or take). A camera’s low quality ability to capture what you look like is not a reflection of you and/or your value. It is a reflection of the perception of a low quality camera. It does not mean you look bad, just rather you need higher quality perception in the way you look at things.
Your ability to get likes and comments on social media should be the same mindset. Your value does not decrease as a result of other people’s inabilities to see your worth. Whether people like or react to your photo or not, you are still going to be beautiful. And as hard as it may be to control your inner dialogue, do not make people’s responses a direct correlation to your value.
You have unique values and characteristics that other people don’t have and vice versa. No two people can be directly compared, as each person has gone through their own individual hardships and upbringings that have shaped them into the person they are today. It’s not fair to yourself or your mind to make these comparisons to who’s doing what or who’s wearing what as no two people are the same.
If there’s any piece of advice I can give; start teaching your sisters, cousins, friends, nieces this lesson early on. Self-confidence has to be built within, and it’s so easy to get lost in this generation that is based around social media. Unfortunately, I’m seeing it happen more and earlier,and it’s something that needs to be recognized. I don’t want my future daughter to grow up in a world where she feels the need to post certain content for the appraisal of others. I want her to be able to hold her head up with the exact same amount of confidence whether it be 1 like or 1000. Having confidence does not mean accepting yourself when others do, it’s completely accepting yourself when everyone else doesn’t. Everything else? It’s just background noise. Move past it