All people have an innate desire to be accepted. Everyone seeks approval and a sense of belonging in the world.

While this could only be achieved by physical interaction in the past, the sudden rise of social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, have made it possible for people to satisfy this craving through another outlet.

By posting selfies or photos taken with their friends, people are able to receive virtual and almost immediate feedback to how they are looked upon by society. We use superficial factors like reblogs or likes to determine whether or not we looked great in a photo, or if that day when we had a picnic with our friends was really that special of an event. We let a click of a mouse, or a tap on a touch screen decide what’s beautiful or significant to us.

Our society has developed such an extreme need for approval that some people have actually started to buy likes on their Facebook page, or followers on Instagram. Others add about a hundred random hash tags so that they can triple or quadruple their likes on a photo or a video that they posted.

Why is it that so many of us hold the likes or reblogs of complete strangers to such a high value that we let it judge ourselves or our experiences? Instead of feeling good about a selfie because WE liked it, or an event because WE had fun at it, we now totally disregard our opinions, if these photos or videos don’t get a lot of likes.

Tina Geiser (11) shares that “getting likes is more of an acceptance thing than anything else.” She goes on to say that “people find it nice to know that others care about what they are doing and that the moments that they captured are also as funny to others as they are to them.”

How many times have you pondered over photos or videos before posting them, asking yourself which one would get you more likes? Or how many people are guilty of deleting a photo because it didn’t receive as many likes as we thought it would?

We need to decide if we are going to allow empty opinions dictate our standards of what is beautiful and meaningful. We need to learn to share photos because we want to, and because we like them – not to please others.

Before we let our innate desire to ‘belong’ conquer our lives, we need to learn to first recognize that we are enough. That what we think does in fact matter. That our true sense of worth comes from within.

After all, we can’t expect to belong and be accepted if we don’t already value our opinions and ourselves. Acceptance – something we all yearn for –begins with a pinch of self-respect and a little bit of self-love.

Sarah Lim