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Comment by wolfgke | Hacker News Reader

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wolfgke·

> especially today where your self-worth can fluctuate based on the amount of likes your last Instagram post got.

Simple solution: delete your Instagram account.

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That's indistinguishable from the number of likes being zero.

It certainly isn't. If you are active on social media and post something you care about only for it to get no likes the majority of people would feel significantly worse than simply enjoying something and not posting it on the internet for praise/approval from strangers and acquaintances. I'm very happy to have not had instagram, twitter, facebook, etc. for the majority of my early education

Me too, but for that to be possible requires friends who don't demand that one uses them to voluntarily associate.

Most kids in middle school don't have careers, property, deep responsibilities, or most other things adults focus on. They just have phones, a handful of friends, and some sort of position in an arbitrary social hierarchy, and so they put most of their focus into getting social approval. Grades matter only to the extent that they get social approval from adults.

Telling a middle schooler to just quit social media is like telling an adult in a capitalist society to just not worry about money. It isn't that easy to opt-out of the thing most of your world is based on.

Popularity has always been important. Social media makes it slightly easier to quantify, but it was always there. Deleting an account does not make popularity less important.

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