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What role does validation play in one's mental health, and what are the pros and cons of social media in this respect? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Just a mild passing thought and curiosity to mull over

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Validation is one of the things on maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's essential for people to feel belonging and connection with other humans. We're hardwired for it and the lack of it leads to poor outcomes almost always.

Social media is not a good source of validation. If social media were limited to just the people you knew and communicated with at least semi-regularly it would be very useful for receiving validation. However once you branch out to people you don't know, healthy validation becomes more difficult. It also introduces a number of unhelpful facsimiles of validation (parasocial relationships, internet points).

100,000 likes/views/upvotes/retweets does not replace respect and acceptance from your peers for your emotional wellbeing, it's not even a good substitute.

No social media platform has figured it out yet, but that doesn't mean it's not possible to build one that could be a good source of validation. It's unlikely though so long as roi is important to the people that build social networks.