The Importance of Self Validation

When we are born, we cry. What happens next? Our mothers and fathers console us — External Validation

When we are toddlers, we fall. What happens next? Our mothers and fathers ask if we are alright — External Validation.

When we are in middle school, we struggle with homework. Our parents or mentors ask if we need help — External Validation.

When we get into our first relationship, they tell us they love us — External Validation.

When we study hard for an exam and end up scoring above the class average — External Validation.

For a quarter of our life we validate ourselves by external forces. Not one of these examples is about validating yourself as you are. When are we taught to be confident in ourselves and abilities? Engaged and self-aware parents can teach us, yet the system that we rely on for education does not.

Symptoms of the Problem

Technology giants engineered smartphones to provide surges of dopamine every time you hear a ping, see a red number or three dots on a message window.

All this is taking place within the palms of our hands and in the complex neural network of our brains. Without any guidance or training we attach meaning to situations that are happening in the dystopian world of our devices and not in our reality.

Here are some of the scenarios and questions that youth and even adults might experience:

• My follower count — does this show how popular I am?
• How many likes I get — does this determine if people like me?
• How many comments I get — if no one comments, do people care?
• They read my DM (direct message) and didn’t respond — did I say something wrong?
• I can’t see this person’s profile — am I blocked? What did I do?
• My friends are posting to their stories and took a group photo where I wasn’t invited — why did they exclude me?
• They unfollowed me — are we not friends?
• I can’t like their posts because they don’t like my posts.

Evolution designed our brains to deduce situations in order for us to process what is happening. It attaches meaning and determines causation that occur in a disassociated method of connection.

When you multiply this by the hundreds of pings you receive on a daily basis and you get into a state of ‘Digital Dementia’ as written by Jim Kwik in his Book Limitless. He writes, “Digital Dementia is the overuse of digital technology resulting in the breakdown of cognitive abilities and causing short term memory pathways to deteriorate from underuse by overusing technology”.

Up to this point I’ve only mentioned the issues. I will now focus on how to unpack this dilemma and how to live with our devices as a complement to our lives and not as a digital validation tool. The following is applicable for assessing your own self esteem and insecurities, a parental-child relationship, understanding how you validate your romantic partner, your friends and family.

Understanding the Issue

Start with the question, “How does _____ like to be validated?”

The _____ can be: you, your friends, spouse, children or anyone who you have an emotional connection with.

If that was difficult, try to understand what makes you feel validated. Do you feel validated when you get acknowledged at work? How about when someone compliments your style? Or when someone says you are funny.

These are all ways that other people validate us for what they believe we are.

Let’s bring this back to a digital context. You post about a promotion, a photo of you wearing a brand new outfit, or a funny story about something that happened. How is the success of these posts determined? By how many likes and comments you get.

We all have some arbitrary expectation on what a satisfactory number of likes is and if it is below that threshold, we don’t feel validated. This is especially true for children, I’d like to think adults are more mature and they should know that likes and comments don’t determine value but age and maturity are not correlated.

The other area that receives less attention is understanding what determines a friendship and how to foster successful relationships. Before social media, you had to pick up the phone or see them face to face to invest in that relationship. Now, we can connect with friends and family across the world in a second. But what does that mean to the strength of that connection?

Likes

What does a ‘like’ constitute? Is a like an investment in a friendship or relationship? If my friends like my posts, that means we are still friends. If they don’t like my posts, does that mean we are not? Does a like/comment act as an investment in a relationship? Your friend posts about their trip to Japan and you liked every photo, does that mean you know exactly what happened during their trip? We all know the answer to this, but it’s helpful to question why we like/comment and compare that to the time we’ve actually invested in the relationship.

I found myself liking all these public posts: basketball highlights, travel photos, memes, funny videos, but for what? What am I getting from doing that? Does my action of double tapping on a photo or video gain me entry into an exclusive social club? With this new found access, what can I do with it? What happens if I don’t like these posts? Does that mean I can’t see them anymore? Of course not.

It took me years to reflect on the aimless scrolling and liking, without contemplating what a like actually meant. Am I trying to seek validation from others because I liked a post that 1 million other people liked? I also found that I was more likely to like a tweet if tens of thousands of people liked it, versus a tweet with a few hundred or less. I thought “by liking this post how can I be wrong if thousands of others already liked it?” This is a classic example of herd mentality that fed my desire to be “right”.

Call to Action

We are unfortunately at the whims of technology giants as they dominate the communication marketplace. But that does not mean we cannot build mental models or habits around how we use these platforms. We should strive to validate ourselves and not let technology tell us what our benchmarks should be.

We want to be in control. We want to know all our actions are being decided by our conscious brains and not someone or something else. So the next time your phone vibrates, think about what that disturbance is doing for you.