Validation. It used to be from text messages. If our cellphone didn’t beep in a long while or if we checked it after leaving it stowed away somewhere for hours and the screen is blank, devoid of message notifications or missed calls, we’d get a heavy feeling in our chest and think, “nobody loves me!”
Now the measure of how “loved” we are is by the number of “likes” we get on your Facebook status messages, photos, videos or notes.
Where we used to sneak out our cellphone in between breaks to check if we got a text, we now tab to our Facebook page to glance at the bottom right corner, hoping that it would have a red bubble stating the number of our validation – the number of likes and comments that we got from posting what we thought was clever or funny or interesting or our pleas and rants and calls for attention.
And if there is no bubble, we feel disappointed, thinking that nobody cares, that nobody loves us, as if love could be measured in “likes.”