Does social media determine your worth?

What does that "like" on your recent picture that you posted mean? What does the number of views on your recent video mean? What does the number of comments you get on your posts mean? Today many tend to get so obsessed over social media that it almost runs their life. The morning insta story that you have to post to show the world what your life has been like at dawn rise. Or the lunch time meal that you had, that you most certainly need the world to see. Today many tend to determine their self worth by how many followers they have or how many likes and views they have for their posts. People tend to post moments of their happiness and are usually not very open to posting their vulnerable moments for the world to see. Many try to depict a life of perfection, where happiness is the only thing that prevails. Social media can be beneficial as well as detrimental, if not well moderated. How many of us can say that all our "friends" on facebook or all our "followers" on instagram are people we personally know and hang out frequently with. Social media is a good platform to update ourselves on daily news or information of what is happening in the world. Social media can also start to destroy our lives when we become too dependent on it for determining our worth. Many thrive for approval and validation from others in order to feel that their lives are worth being celebrated. This validation comes in the form of likes, followings, comments and views. We need to realize that there is more to our selfworth than all of these. We need to be able to self validate the purpose of our existence regardless of approval from others. The only people that truly know us are not the random people on social media that are viewing our lives from the outside and judging us based on what they see from the surface, because thats all the information they have to carve out the picture of us. Many also use the "unlike" button, "block" button the"unfriend" button or the "unfollow" button to prove a point that they are unhappy with you or they no longer want to be a part of your life. All these internal politics complicates our lives and create unwanted hard feelings and confusions. I am not trying to condemn social media completely and to push it to its grave to be burried and forgotten but rather i would like to ensure that it is necessary to practice a certain level of caution in ensuring that we don't allow it to swallow us completely into its grip. We need to draw lines between reality and illusions.