How Do You Find Self Worth

[Music]

have you ever

realized how hard it is to determine

your self-worth

maybe not but as a clinical psychologist

i often

think about this concept and i’ve

watched for nearly two decades now

as i’ve seen the social media world try

to create

a solution for us you want to hear what

it is probably

what they’ve done is they’ve built a

mysterious

and complex algorithm that allows

perfect strangers

to define your self-worth through likes

and follows

what could possibly go wrong i’m kidding

of course not a perfect solution at all

but what i would say to you is that when

you’re looking at yourself

have you ever really stopped and really

defined what you allow to define

yourself worth

we can look at merriam-webster who

defines self-worth

as having a sense of one’s own value

as a human being that seems simple

enough right

the issue is is how do we get there how

do we define ourselves

as a human being and is it even

possible to verify our self-worth

without comparing ourselves to the world

around us

that seems like a difficult task to me

when you know the facts

and you know that if we’re on social

media we’re actually checking our social

feed

about two and a half hours every day

that is a whole day every week that

we’re spending online

comparing ourselves to the world around

us

for most of us it doesn’t seem like it’s

a big deal that influences our

self-worth too much

we might jump online check tick tock

post a rant on reddit

see what our friends and family are

doing online

it is a seemingly neutral event

given the gift or maybe the curse of

that algorithm

because all we get in that social feed

is information

that supports our beliefs and never

challenges

our worth against the world

but for some of us there is a darker

side to social media

one that does actually influence and

impact the self-worth

of younger and more naive users

for every post that they put online

there’s feedback through likes follows

and comments

that they have to learn to navigate as

they go

they have actually no online history

that an

algorithm can use to build a feed for

them

so the technology instead has to

experiment it has to send

suggested content

that often can bring hurtful and hateful

information

into their life which definitely will

impact their self-worth

take the life of molly russell

a beautiful 14 year old bright young

lady

she was the youngest of three sisters

and her father would describe her as

enthusiastic

future looking loved by the community

on one day when she returned from school

she actually had finished her assignment

submitted something online

went over packed her school bag for the

next day

and then she said goodnight to her

parents and went to bed

a seemingly ordinary day that many of us

have

probably felt with our families

by morning the family would be awakened

to

an utter tragedy as molly had taken her

life

sometime during the evening

there was no devastation that a family

could feel more than that

so the family looking for answers

obviously look to her social media

to find out what could have occurred and

what they found

was information like this distressing

material that was about self-harm

suicide

depression

but you see molly is a typical teenager

she’s somebody who went on to social

media wanting to find

connection and explore and have fun with

her friends

but instead she was drawn into this

world of angst

and pain and hopelessness

the algorithm taking her further and

deeper away

from that self-worth and that value that

she needed

you might think that because i’m a

psychologist that i’m really only

worried about the implications to our

self-worth from this darker side of

social media

but actually this isn’t a talk about the

two sides of social media

this is about self-worth and why i’d

like you to believe

that social media should never be able

to define yours or anyone you love

you see social media actually

trains us to depend on external

validation

for our self-worth through these likes

and comments

instead of on who we are as people

in return we feel obligated

in order to make other people happy to

grant them

affirmation and validation liking their

posts

through comments it creates this vicious

and very shallow cycle of likes and

posts

back and forth

if you think about in a world where

we’re dealing with

our issues online and we’re sharing this

information

and we’re not taking into context who

they are

and what they’re doing it can get pretty

challenging

but the issue with social media is

actually

that we’re tied into the audience

it’s not very hard to feel all the love

from the likes from our friends and our

family

but where’s the fun in just sharing that

with our friends and our family

we want to open ourselves up to this

larger global community

and when we do that it becomes harder

and harder to find those likes

and get that affirmation that we need

that social media has

trained us to depend on

there’s 7.8 billion people on earth

so the global community that we’re going

into

has about five billion people online and

at last

check there were 4.2 billion social

media users

going online every day

that’s increasing by about a hundred

thousand people

every week

it’s pretty hard to feel special maybe

it’s just me but i think it’s pretty

hard to feel special

in a crowd of over 4 billion people

but if those numbers don’t convince you

maybe the 2.5

quintillion bytes of data that are

shared every day

will convince you of how hard it is to

find our likes

and feel special

and if you’re like me and you’re trying

to figure out what a quintillion is

because we haven’t heard that term from

congress yet it is a million million

millions

or a million trillion or you can think

of as a billion billion

times 2.5 super clear right

you might just have to trust me it is a

tremendous

amount of data and that post that you

put out there

is likely going to be outranked even

though it’s super cool and your cat may

have learned how to dance during kovid

i am not standing here today trying to

convince you that the future of society

depends on all of us abandoning social

media

although that thought does creep into my

mind just sometimes just going to tell

you

what i’m here to convince you of is to

please not allow

social media to influence or define

your self-worth what if instead

we embrace the idea that we all have

self-worth simply because we’re humans

like merriam-webster suggests

what if we actually could eliminate our

dependence on those follows and those

likes

or what if we could actually reject the

idea

that an algorithm or maybe

worse yet a bunch of other random humans

could define our self-worth

define your self-worth by the way you

live your life

trust in who you are and be

you in this world you do not need an

algorithm

or a bunch of obligatory likes to

convince you otherwise

and when you actually stop counting all

the likes

and you’re able to be fully free from

that following

you will find your value and your

self-worth

and whoever you are i promise you

you are enough thank you

you