What happens to Intrinsic Value in the Digital Age | #THIKINGHUES
A call to self-reclamation and why reconsidering our attachment to our digital personas is important for the future preservation of self-worth.
Do you remember the days when you used to do things for its own sake versus for the gram? The idea of self-intrinsic motivation comes easier when considered in the context of the days before Facebook or Instagram, but how many of us truly remember life before smartphones became synonymous with daily life?
Before the norm of parading life on the digital stage of social media, we once reveled in the purity of a moment. The days when we were accustomed to listening to the desires of our immediate surroundings, communities, and even where our internal compass led us to. Unswayed by the pull of digital affirmations or the public displays of life and beyond, we evolved as social creatures reliant on the immediate feedback and customs of our immediate communities. Never have we existed in a time where we are all so interconnected– no matter where we are in the world.
While the internet has opened many doors, like the democratisation of information and knowledge to even the most remote areas on earth, this rapid and continuous disruption of app updates and innovation is also causing an integral value of humanity to start to fade away. The values of personal privacy, solitude, and introspection seem eclipsed by the overwhelming luster of constant stimulation, public disclosure, and mass validations.
In today’s world, the approval of communities at large, on the Internet, seems to sway stronger for some than the depth of connections through real-life relationships– the kind you need to spend real time to nurture. This is a worrying trend, especially for the younger generations who never knew a world before Instagram and Facebook. Our social wiring drives us to search for meaningful connections, yet the fading depths of relationships and the rampant creation of online facades are promoting the illusion of real connections yet through unfruitful means.
What’s happening at the pace we’re moving is a profound rewiring of our collective consciousness. A profound shift in self-image is occurring, where many are trading the solid bedrock of intrinsic worth and real connections for the fickle winds of external approvals– often, validated by strangers over the real community of friends and loved ones.
This seismic societal evolution is recalibrating the meaning of self-perception and grooming a future generation that’s basing their self-esteem on the borrowed lens of others versus an innate knowing– which all of us were born with, but seem to have been conditioned to forget.
The question is what happens to self-perception if your self-worth is solely determined by the validation of external sources? What happens to self-image? It seems with shifting values the self-concept is also enduring a transformation.
The idea of the ‘self’ becomes intertwined with a fragile balancing act between the likes, followers, and a sense of approval from external parties, against the true knowing of your own self of self-worth. You are pitting yourself against the shallow persona of you online against the complex and multi-dimensional of who you are as a person in real life.
The issue with such norms of public seeking of affection is how it threatens the foundational idea of what self-image is. If you’re only living for the gram, and for the gratification and approval of others, then your life is only geared toward external validation and you won’t be equipped to nurture a sense of self or appreciate a sense of self-worth outside of the approval of others.
But, self-image, as the name recites, should be about how you value yourself. If you’re born into this world, your value as a living human being is inherent. The way you see yourself is an inherent value we were all born with, yet with the way and the pace the world is evolving, self-image is under threat. As our self-concept is fast becoming one contingent on the validation, approval, and praise of others— which shatters the foundational idea of what self-image is.
The questions to ask are: what happens to the idea of self-image if your idea of yourself is dependent upon the approval of others– and, especially of strangers? What happens to your sense of self if your judgment of your ‘self’ is based on the opinions of hundreds, sometimes millions— when we evolved as small communities of hunter and gatherers? While social belonging is a natural desire, what happens if your brain rewires itself to create its idea of itself through the likes and followers you have in the digital realm? Life on the Internet and on social media is rarely an accurate depiction of the vibrancy, complexities, and dynamism of real life. So, what becomes of self-image if today’s priority on social media over real-life persists?
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