Seeking Validation & Why It’s Bad For You

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

The other night, I turned my phone off so I could sit down and write. It’s not that I need to check my phone every 12 minutes, it’s just that sometimes, it’s hard to let my notifications and messages sit unattended. Like a lot of people, I’ve learned to moderate my phone usage in various ways. By having certain apps lock me out after 20 minutes, for example. Or by turning my phone off so I can concentrate. Or by silencing all my notifications, or changing my phone’s display to grayscale. Social media provides stupid little dopamine rushes that make us feel smart and special and validated. The truth is though, that nobody cares that much, but the bottomless pit of the internet might convince you otherwise.

The average American spends 2 hours and 14 minutes on social media every day. Our average screen time is over seven hours a day. The more active someone is online, the more time they spend glued to their phone. It’s one thing to be a passive consumer, and quite another to be diving headfirst into the fray. One thing that makes social media so addictive is interactivity. Feedback from other people is instantaneous. So is validation, and so is social condemnation. What really gets people hooked though, is the immediacy of social platforms. Dr. Preeti Kocchar, a counseling psychologist, states that…