Using Social Media in Search of Validation

Welcome to our blog that we’re writing for class #COMS427. Last week, Victoria from class shared an article on her Twitter page that we found interesting and raised an important topic. The famous rapper Kanye West has been raising awareness on his Twitter page about the psychological consequences that can arise from social media. He continued, in a series of tweets, to challenge the inherent norms of platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, stating that we should be able to participate in social media with the option of not having to show your followers or likes.

What kind of content would people be posting if they didn’t get instant gratification in forms of “likes” in return? The rapper raises a good point in that social media following has an immense impact on our self-worth, and this is very worrisome.

The mentioned tweets make us think of the “uses and gratifications theory” explained by Whiting and Williams. This theory argues “that individuals will seek out media among competitors that fulfills their needs and leads to ultimate gratifications (Lariscy et al., 2011).” (Whiting & Williams 363) In other words, people feel pleasure when a need is satisfied by using social media and so they wish to reuse this platform routinely.

The article highlights ten themes linked to the uses and gratifications theory such as social interaction, information seeking, entertainment, and others. (Whiting and Williams 366) However, we believe that the author may have forgotten an important one. Validation. In fact, a growing number of people seem to be using social media (mostly Instagram) to get validation of their self-worth. Users come back to social media because they are addicted to the “likes” they receive on their content. The more “likes” they have, the better they feel about themselves.

This is starting to be a dangerous problem for the youth. Many self-esteem and
psychological problems emerge from this use of social media to obtain validation. In a recent Tweet, West stated that “There are people who are committing suicide due to not getting enough likes. Seeking validation in the simulation.”

We believe much of today’s society is extremely dependent of their devices and social media, and it is important that the youth know that their self-worth is not determined by the amount of following they have, which in most cases are fake.

It would be interesting to see how the world reacts to a drastic change like removing those metrics. What content would people post and would marketers and social media influencers, who make a living off of these numbers, have the same impact they have now?

* The tweets used in this blog post have been deleted from Kayne West's twitter (2018/10/07).

References:

Whiting, A. & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16 (4), 362–369.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/22/kanye-west-followers-galore-social-medias-unlikely-critic