“The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” — William James
On February 9, 2009, the trajectory of our culture was changed forever. What happened? There wasn’t a terrorist attack or stock market crash or presidential election. At the time, it didn’t even seem that important; just a young company introducing a peculiar new feature. On that day in 2009, Facebook introduced the like button.
To get to the heart of our issues with social media, we must first understand why we use social media. And to understand why we use social media, we have to examine why something as simple as a like button has so deeply affected our lives.
When social media first appeared, society was sold on the benefits of a connected world where you could interact with anyone, anywhere. Social media was supposed to be like an online playground, where people from all over the world could play together and become friends.
Mark Zuckerberg shared this ideal in Facebook's IPO filing in 2012, saying that Facebook "was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected." Most social media companies echoed this theme, convincing us that their products would create a more connected and unified world.
But while the playground ideal of social media has always sounded nice, it doesn’t explain why people are so drawn to social media. To say that social media is about connection is like saying that people eat ice cream to get calcium; while it's technically true, there's something deeper going on. After all, it's not the desire for connection that causes you to:
Spend hours every day scrolling social media.
Worry about how many people are following you.
Try to make every post perfect.
Compulsively check your post’s performance.
So if connection isn't the real reason everyone uses social media, what's actually going on? What’s the real reason we use social media?
why do you use social media?
Human beings aren’t drawn to social media out of a desire to connect with others but rather because everyone wants to feel approved. That is why Facebook’s introduction of a like button was so monumental. It gave users the ability, with the click of a mouse or tap of their thumb, to give feedback to anyone on Facebook. What is a like, after all, but a tool to give and receive positive feedback, also known as approval?
As social media apps realized how strong our need is for approval, they honed their products into the perfect tools for giving and receiving feedback. An early Facebook VP for User Growth confirms this: "Every one of these systems (social media apps) exploits our natural human tendency to get and want feedback." This is why every social media app is optimized for two main actions: for people to share their lives and for audience members to give feedback.
Why do people want feedback? Because deep down, everybody wants the approval and acceptance of the people around them. When you look into why we spend so much of our lives on social media, you see that human beings aren't drawn to social media because we’re trying to connect with others but rather because we want to feel approved.
New York Times columnist David Brooks explained it this way: “Our natural bent is to seek social approval and fear exclusion. Social networking technology allows us to spend our time engaged in a hyper-competitive struggle for attention, for victories in the currency of likes.” We all desire other people's approval, which is why collectively, we're so drawn to social media.
For as much as social media companies sold us on the idea of social media as an online playground, society began to use these apps like a talent show. One by one, you get up in front of your peers and perform your best act, hoping you will get the most applause. Social media gives you a stage to perform your best and then watch the audience's response.
This is why every social media performance is built on an unspoken question that we're interested in getting feedback on: here I am; do you approve of me?
Look at me on the beach: I’m attractive, right?
Look at where I traveled to: I’m adventurous, right?
Look at my happy kids: I’m a good parent, right?
Look at my wedding pictures: I’m successful, right?
Look at how clever my caption is: I’m smart, right?
This is the genius of social media; it allows you to get feedback on the question you are most interested in while acting like a one-way mirror, letting you invisibly watch others give feedback on your life.
That's why there's so much anxiety around posting on social media; you never know if your performance will receive a standing ovation or chirping crickets. If your peers give you a thunderous response, you're ecstatic. But if you only get a few polite claps, then you're devastated. Every day is a new opportunity to perform for others, and once you finish, you rejoin the audience to judge everyone else.
If you want further proof that social media is built around performing for feedback, then check out Influencers in the Wild, an Instagram account that documents the crazy things people will do to get the perfect social media performance. Young people all over the world dance, pose, and perform in increasingly bizarre ways, hoping it'll generate just a little bit more applause.
While it's easy to laugh at extreme examples, everyone who posts on social media is guilty of the same behavior because everyone craves positive feedback and approval. This is why dating apps, another form of social media, have become so popular. With a swipe, you can receive immediate feedback on whether other people find you romantically attractive. If you get matches with beautiful people, you feel great, but if you don't, the negative feedback (silence) makes you feel rejected.
But this doesn't just happen on dating apps; it happens everywhere. When we're getting applause and approval, we feel great about ourselves. But if we don’t get the applause we'd like, when people don't like our posts and don't watch our stories, we feel excluded, unnoticed, and unwanted.
I hope you're seeing what’s at the core of our relationship with social media. We aren't drawn to these apps because we want to create community or connect with others, but rather because we all want feedback on our lives. This is why our culture obsesses over social media: we're all hungry for approval, so we share our performances on social media to get other people's applause.
why do we use social media like this?
If a desire for approval motivates us to use social media, why are we so invested in receiving positive feedback? The reason is that everyone bases their self-worth on how other people react to them. Ben Storr, a writer for The Atlantic, puts it this way:
“In an individualistic culture, you gain status, self-image, and meaning primarily through how other people see you.” This causes everyone to “become preoccupied with what others think about them, since we believe that our self-worth is a reflection of what you think other people think about you.”
This is why we care so much about the feedback on our social media performances; we want to see how our peers value us. We post a picture, story, tweet, or video and then watch who and how people react to us. We then base our self-worth on the reaction of our peers. This is why people are hyper-aware of who follows them, likes their posts, and watches their stories. Every bit of feedback is a referendum on our self-worth.
This drives us to invest in our social media performance, hoping that by getting our peers' approval, we will establish a high sense of self-worth. "See," we say to ourselves after a post does better than expected, "I really am something!" Storrs continues:
Self-worth in adolescents is based mainly on their peer’s approval of them. In a world of social media, seeking attention and approval from others is how adolescents determine their self-worth. They create an image of themselves they think others will approve of.”
While most people on social media have moved beyond adolescence, this doesn't mean that this behavior goes away. We spend our lives trying to create social media performances that others will applaud, hoping to obtain high self-worth. Fredrik DeBoer summarizes social media well when he writes:
Of all the toxic and disheartening elements of the internet era, the worst is the way that our concept of human value is so often seen as purely crowdsourced. It’s resulted in an internet where a huge portion of the activity ultimately amounts to people begging strangers to approve of them.
But this raises an important question, why do we look to others to get our sense of self-worth? Why do we use social media to crowd-source our value? Because deep down, we're all insecure about whether we matter. Every person has an endless argument going on in their head, debating questions like: Am I valuable? Do I matter? Will I ever be enough?
Henri Nouwen describes the struggle of our internal self-argument like this:
As I look within as well as around myself, I am overwhelmed by the dark voices telling me, 'You are nothing special; you are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable, you are nobody—unless you can demonstrate the opposite.
These negative voices are so loud and persistent that it is easy to believe them. That's the great trap. It's the trap of self-rejection. My dark side says: "I am no good, I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned."
Haven’t you felt that way? Haven’t you heard those inner voices telling you that you don't matter and are no good? We all have that inner voice of self-rejection, the one that doesn't believe we're valuable, acceptable, or worthy. Deep down, we all ache for someone else to validate us and tell us we’re doing ok.
And so we perform on social media, as Nouwen says, to "demonstrate the opposite." We package our lives in a way we trust our peers will like, hopeful that they will give us enough applause to silence this internal argument and prove to ourselves that we have self-worth.
If they give us positive feedback in the form of likes, follows, comments, and compliments, then we’re happy. “I knew I was special!” we tell ourselves, beaming with self-worth. But if we receive negative feedback, either in the form of silence, criticism, or a lack of applause, our self-worth falls apart. We grow sad, frustrated, and bitter toward our friends. Our world caves in on itself, all because we didn’t get the positive feedback that we were tying our self-worth to.
You might be thinking, "I'm sorry to hear other people are like this, but I don't struggle with this because I never post." But just because you don't post doesn't mean you're not caught in the grip of this performative feedback system. Many people refuse to post on social media not because they’re more virtuous but because they’re afraid they won’t get positive feedback. They’re often even more paralyzed by the need for approval, causing them to avoid posting altogether.
Lots of people who don’t post enjoy being a judge of other people’s performances but are terrified of getting up on stage themselves. So they never post on social media unless they’re guaranteed approval, like with an engagement, wedding, or birth announcement post. This may make you feel morally superior to others, but in reality, you struggle with the same social media behavior.
Whether you post every day or twice a decade, social media has become our culture’s preferred tool for measuring our self-worth. We hone our public act, hoping that by generating more applause, we can prove to ourselves and others that we matter.
what happens when you use social media like this?
So what happens when you use social media applause to build your self-worth? You'll become obsessed over your performance, doing everything you can to ensure that your act is perfect. Mark Sayers, a pastor from Australia, says:
When our worth is tied to what others think of us, we end up obsessed with ourselves. We are always thinking about ways to hone our act, our public persona, our looks, and grooming. We are narcissistic and obsessive about our appearance and public brand, and the opinions of others are supreme to us.
This is a significant reason so many people have an unhealthy relationship with social media. If your self-worth reflects how other people react to you, you will become preoccupied with how they see you. David Brooks describes this performative part of social media well:
We use it (social media) to cultivate a broadcasting personality that creates a culture in which people turn into little brand managers to create a falsely upbeat, slightly over-exuberant, external self that can be famous first in a small sphere and then with luck, in a larger one."
We all are guilty of becoming this slightly over-exuberant self to attract attention and approval. "Look how happy I am!" we imply to our followers. "My life's pretty incredible, right?" Why are we like this? Brooks continues:
A core activity of the human self is maintaining a deep interest in, and trying to control, what others think of us. We’re all, to some degree, anxious and hyperactive PR agents for ourselves.”
And so we grow obsessed with every detail of how we appear and come across. We become controlling about our online personas, thinking that if we can perfect our performance, we'll get the applause we crave. Public relations, once a field reserved for celebrities, has become a regular part of our social media-saturated lives.
Given the self-worth at stake, obsessing over our performance requires us to improve it. So you study other people's social media performance, imitating the ones that get the most applause. You then shrink your real personality and conform your performance to what's popular, hopeful that this will help you get more applause.
While everyone on social media acts like they are their authentic self, this environment causes a herd mentality, where everyone stampedes after whatever performances get the most applause. This is why so much of social media is the same: people copy what’s working and post the same pictures, captions, tourist destinations, restaurants, walls, and angles, over and over and over. Everyone hopes that if they can just fine-tune their social media performance, they'll finally get the attention and applause that will make them feel like a somebody!
why doesn't this work?
But no matter how hard you work on social media to build an applause-worthy performance, you'll never experience lasting satisfaction. Why? Because of three main reasons.
The first reason this approach towards social media won't satisfy you is that performing always leads to performance anxiety. Anytime you perform for others, you'll always be uncertain about their response; you'll never know whether your audience will love, hate, or ignore your performance. As David Brenner writes:
"Securing love by generating accomplishments leaves one dependent on the potentially fickle response of others."
This is why so many people struggle with social media anxiety. If your self-worth is based on how your audience reacts to your performance, you'll always live in fear of the next performance, causing you to ride a rollercoaster of anxious emotions every time you post.
The second problem with this approach is that all applause quickly fades away. It doesn't matter how much applause you get on one post or during one season of life; it will soon be gone, and with it, the sense of approval on which you were basing your self-worth.
And when the applause inevitably ends, every person has to face reality: no amount of external applause will ever lead to the permanent inner applause we're all looking for. No matter how much applause you get, it will never be enough to quell your insecurities and translate into the certainty of being approved.
The third reason performing on social media can't satisfy you is that when you get applause for performing, you’ll never be able to stop performing. Even if you get millions of followers, the buzz will always wear off, causing you to need to keep performing. In a Ted Talk about craving attention, famous actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt said, “There is no amount of attention you can get to where you feel like you’ve arrived.”
This means that you must keep performing, hoping that the next round of applause will finally settle your inner fear of self-rejection. And once you start performing on social media, the pressure to create a more elaborate performance will grow as your audience tires of what you've done in the past.
And unlike a real talent show, with social media, your life is the stage, which means you can never get off. You'll grow addicted to the applause and be unable to stop performing, afraid that your self-worth will plummet. As Naval Ravikant says, "The reward for getting on the stage is fame. The price of fame is you can't get off the stage."
While getting other people's approval on our social media performances feels great at first, it's a broken system that can't satisfy the longings of our hearts. We hope that by performing for others we can get their validation and heal the deficit we feel in our hearts, but no matter how hard we try, we always end up feeling empty.
what's the root cause of this problem?
So if performing for applause doesn't work, why does everyone keep following it? We know deep down that this isn't working, but yet we just can't quit the system.
That's because your problems don't originate in a social media app but in your heart. At your core, your hunger for applause isn't a social media issue but a spiritual one. Social media companies didn't create our fundamental need for approval and applause but instead used it to capture our attention and turn it into advertising revenue.
So what's wrong with our hearts? The problem is that every human being was created to thrive on God's attention and approval, yet because of sin, we were separated from God and lost His approval. Now, in our rebellion against God, we look to social media to try to fill the gaping hole in our hearts.
This all started back in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God and were blanketed in His acceptance and approval. They were at total peace and never had to perform, either for each other or God. But when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, their sin separated them from God and caused them to lose His acceptance and approval. They were now free from God, but rather than feeling fulfilled, they experienced alienation from God and each other.
Now, because we're sinners, we're also alienated from God and have lost His acceptance and approval. But human beings weren't made to live apart from God, so when we refuse to be in a relationship with Him, we create an unfillable void in our hearts.
But despite our alienation, we refuse to admit our need for God and instead devise technologies like social media to fill our need for His approval. Jon Tyson, a pastor in New York City, put it this way:
Since Eden, we have been on a similar journey: facing down our insecurity, unsure of our worth in the world, using others as scaffolding to build ourselves up. We ache for that place where we are unconditionally loved and no longer need to prove our worth. But citizenship and success in any earthly society will never be enough. They will never fill our souls because the ache we feel is eternal.
Because we’ve rejected eternal significance in God’s eye, we have to try to fill our hearts with the fleeting high of human applause. No matter how hard we try, it just won't work.
how can you solve this need for approval?
So how can you solve this need for approval and avoid all of the disastrous side effects of trying to do it through social media? Our current culture tries to fix this problem through three different approaches, assuming that if you can just get enough external applause, you can solve your heart's inner need for approval. So we believe that:
"I just need a little more applause": You think that if you just double your likes or get 100,000 followers, then you'd finally be satisfied. This is why so many people work so hard at social media, hoping that a more significant amount of applause will finally satisfy them. But no matter how much applause you get, the validation will always wear off, leaving you on a never-ending performance treadmill.
"I just need to learn to love myself": You're told that if you fill your life with more positive inner self-talk like "I am worthy of love," then you'll solve your inner thirst for approval. The problem with this approach is that deep down, everyone knows there are parts of our personalities that are unhealthy and unlovable. That is why self-love can never overcome the tendency to self-reject and self-loath. We know that our opinion of ourselves is too biased to matter much, which is why we need a verdict from someone other than ourselves.
"Just fake it till you make it": You're told to act like you don't need other people's approval since the best way to get applause is to act like you don't care about it. This causes people to project a social media performance of absolute confidence and total control over their lives. But this advice just creates a separation between how you act and how you feel, which is why so many people struggle with imposter syndrome. Their inner self never feels the approval and applause that their outer self gets.
No matter how hard you try to solve your need for applause on your own, these techniques don't work because they can't address your most profound problem: your alienation from God. No amount of external applause will ever heal your relationship with God and give you the permanent inner applause that we all crave. Like trying to treat a brain tumor with Tylenol, these human-centered solutions may help mask the symptoms, but they can't ever fix what's wrong.
But rather than admit to our problem, we instead blame:
Our friends: "If they just gave me more applause, then I'd feel better.”
Ourselves: "If I were better at performing, then I'd be happy.”
Our society: "If social media wasn’t so capitalistic then I'd be happy.”
If you ever want to solve your need for acceptance, approval, and applause, though, you must address your heart's root problem. You must stop looking to social media for approval and instead look to God. So how do you do this?
The Apostle Paul shares how he solved his need for human approval in 1 Corinthians 4. Paul, writing to some of his detractors, says: "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself." Paul makes it clear that he doesn't care what other people think of him; he doesn't care how they evaluate him because he's not looking to them for approval.
But even more radically, Paul says he doesn't even care what he thinks about himself. Paul's self-worth isn't based on his life being judged positively and isn't even based on how he judges himself. So what is Paul's self-worth based on? How can he live without the approval of either his peers or himself?
In the next verse, Paul shares the reason: "It is the Lord who judges me." Paul doesn't care what other people think about him or even what he thinks about himself because he's resting in how God sees him. Paul's saying, in effect:
I don't have to live to get your applause, and I don't even have to live to get my applause because I have God's eternal applause that fills me and sets me free from the need for human approval.
How can Paul be so confident that God is applauding him? Because Paul was resting in Jesus' performance, not his own. Because Paul trusted in Jesus, he received the acceptance, approval, and applause from God that Jesus' perfect performance deserved.
To receive this applause from God, you must admit that your performance can't please God and instead put your trust in Jesus' performance. When you do this, your alienation from God is dissolved, and you get the thunderous applause that God the Father gave to Jesus: "You are my beloved son/daughter; on you my favor rests."
Do you hear that message from God? That through Jesus you are His beloved? That He delights in you and puts His favor on you before you've done anything to merit His approval?
When you understand that because of Jesus' perfect performance, the God of the universe accepts you, approves you, and calls you His beloved, you'll no longer have to use social media to try to fill your inner emptiness. Brennan Manning explained how this can happen in The Ragamuffin Gospel:
That aching search for worth can only be fully satisfied in Christ’s full acceptance and love. I know you long to be seen and validated by the world. But if you live by that law, you’ll be tossed about. You’ll feel trapped in performance mode, constantly living up to labels of ‘successful’ or ‘likable’ or even a ‘committed Christian. Your highest satisfaction is found not in the world’s applause, but in Christ’s approval.
This is the key; you must stop trying to get your peers' acceptance through your online performance and social media accomplishments and instead rest in your standing in Christ. As Tim Keller says:
The Gospel is you must stop trying to steal self-acceptance from other sources, such as your power, achievements, and popularity, and instead warm yourself at the fire of your standing in Jesus Christ.
When you warm yourself at the fire of who you are in Jesus Christ, God's beloved, you'll realize that God has given you all the resounding inner applause and approval you'll ever need. You'll no longer have to perform on social media, as you realize that other people’s approval will never truly satisfy you and that other people's disapproval can never truly hurt you.
so what does gospel-saturated social media look like?
Letting God's gospel-generated applause saturate your heart radically changes how you use social media. Living as God's beloved allows you to quit using social media as a stage for your applause-seeking public performance and instead rest in God’s total approval of you through Christ.
Because you're resting in Christ's performance, you no longer have to obsess over the feedback that other people give on social media. As one pastor put it, “When you have tasted the beauty of God and the approval of God in Christ, the addiction to human approval is broken. You are free.”
When you are filled with God’s applause and free from the opinion of others, it allows three things to happen:
First, it allows you to actually be yourself. Since you don't have to perform to get the most applause possible, you can leave groupthink behind and let your God-given personality shine. You don't have to pursue a fake version of an "impressive life" and can instead share who God has created you to be. This creates an incredible sense of freedom and makes you more interesting and enjoyable.
Second, it heals you of performance anxiety. When you are resting in Christ's finished performance, you no longer have to obsess over how people react to your performance. Why would you live in fear about how many people will like your post or watch your story when the God of the universe calls you His beloved? When you post, remind yourself: "God, I'm resting in your love and approval on my life. I'm not posting this to impress others but to share who you have made me to be."
Lastly, it allows you to give applause away. When you're saturated with God’s approval, social media stops being a competition over who can get the most applause. You can now encourage and cheer other people on, not because of how well they perform, but because you love them. The love and acceptance you've received from God will fill your heart, overflowing onto everyone around you.
When your heart is saturated with God’s love, other people’s praise will no longer control you, setting you free to share on social media in a way that honors God and encourages others. Knowing that you are God’s beloved will allow you to stop using social media as a talent show performance, and instead, help it to become the playground it was supposed to be, where you can connect with others over shared interests and ideas.