Like it or not

Mathilde Barbier

Mar 31, 20234 min read

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" Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance " - Brené Brown

Once upon a time I lived in the countryside. All my primary school education took place in nearby villages, often a walk or short bus ride away. My primary school friends moved on to the nearby local secondary school and I went further away. My parents had requested permission for me to attend an ‘out of borough’ state school, providing me with the opportunity to have more English classes. (Little did they know that this forward thinking on their part would leading me to move to the UK 10 years later, where I have lived most of my adult life! But this is another story!!).

I will never forget my first day at secondary school. Arriving from my village of 500 inhabitants to ‘The City’. My commute involved a car trip, a train journey followed by a walk to the bus stop and finished with a bus ride. It was a real adventure for the 11 year old girl I was.

I thought that the biggest challenge for me would be either the long commute each day or my ‘impostor syndrome’ telling me I was going to be found out for not having the academic level required. I soon discovered that, as ‘the girl from the village’, the main obstacle I would have to face was to ‘fit in’.

Imagine, countryside education vs city culture. The overall size and scale of that new-to-me school with its playground etiquette and dress code (there is no school uniform in France; a shame as it would solve a lot of problems, on many levels). Social activities, interests & hobbies were all different from the rural setting I was used to. Every part of my life was contrasting with my peers. As I was not living locally, I was excluded from many of my peers out of school social activities, and I didn’t have any way to know about it unless I was explicitly told so.

Each day, once the school day was finished, I was rushing to catch my train (1 per hour), then homework, chores and family life. No internet or social media in the 80’s meant I didn’t know the extent to which I was missing out, nor what was being said about my home knitted jumpers. I was not exposed to it until I was back to school the following day.

In terms of classmate’s popularity and by today’s standards, I don’t think I ranked very high in my first year. Thankfully the lack of social media meant my feelings of not belonging and being out of sync with my peers had boundaries set by the school day and overall my social life was happy, in person, essentially local to my village, with a couple of meaningful penfriend relationships.

As social creatures, being liked, befriended and validated are basic survival needs for us humans. Likes are a powerful form of validation. When the ‘clicks’ are accompanied with comments, showing interest, curiosity or a private message and direct communication, they connect people and create a sense of belonging and security.

The flipside of course, is that when reviewing others’ social media activity, people tend to make comparisons: - did I get as many likes as so and so?, why did such person like my post, but this other person didn’t?. Those thoughts can trigger anything from mild disappointment to serious anxiety and everything in between.

Could this search for validation online serve as a replacement for

meaningful connections in real life?

In today’s connected context, I imagine my secondary school experience could have been very different if the “like” button had existed. Leading to FOMO (fear of missing out), games of comparison and low self-esteem, as frequently experienced by young (and not so young) people these days.

Over to you:

How much attention are you paying to the likes and comments you get on your favourite social media platform?
Are you looking at the metrics (number of views, comments, forwards and likes) on your profile or the people you follow? And how does it make you feel?
Did you know you can control what ‘numbers’ you want to see?

Here are some dares for you to play with this month:

Remove the ‘like’ count on your Instagram [1] so people cannot see how many ‘likes’ your post has received, and neither can you.
Install a demetricator [2] on your Facebook profile, a little feature which will hide the different metrics coming up on your page (number of messages, notifications, likes …).
Next time you are about to hit that ‘like’, ‘celebrate’ or ‘love’ button, consider writing a meaningful comment explaining what you appreciate about it instead.

A note to parents and carers:

Why not share the above questions with young people? Engage in a conversation about the ‘like’ button and how they can use it. What it means to be ‘liked’ to them? What can make them feel validated other than their social media feed?

As spring provides a context to plant seeds and watch nature unfold, scatter those seeds of meaningful ‘likes’ around and watch them grow. Dare to be the change you want to see in your organisation, family, community and life!

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