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