A world where the count of likes tends to provide social gratification, it constructs an emotional structure of the young social media users. In order to eradicate such emotional stresses that put a negative psychological impact especially on adolescents, Facebook had been trying to remove displaying like-counts and instead emphasizing only on the follow button.
Earlier, Instagram, a photo-centric forum had noticed such upheaval of a normal lifestyle as many of the pictures seemed intriguing for users.
The superficial materialistic display played an intense role in the human mind instead of mere entertainment purpose arousing disappointment, lack of confidence and gradually developing several neurotic symptoms amongst the younger generation.
Facebook, since last year too, had been harnessing to implement such an idea with the intension of erasing such biases that can drive young people into a like-mongering community. This year the attempt has been initiated over pages on Facebook, where the profile appears only with a follow button. This includes pages of star actors, creators, authors, and media (a small group of media entities such as publishers and brands).
Apart from the mental health issues, this new design enables lesser compressibility and greater usability of this social platform as a hub of sharing motivations, and other ideas as a Facebook community as a whole. The soon-to-arrive individualistic approach might soon become more motivational where the count of likes won’t be visible to disrupt the flow of one’s ability to express oneself without the fear of any dejection because of a lesser count of likes.
Based on it, the social media giant writes:
We don’t want Facebook to feel like a competition — we hope to learn whether this change can help people focus less on likes and more on telling their story,
With social media slowly becoming a platform for global communication in an extraordinary way, it should become more open to our society catering to different classes of people with different kinds of knowledge and taste to flourish rather than become biased, curbing the flow of creativity.
Moreover, the psychological influence it has on every individual is very crucial to recognize the significance of removing any false gratification method and indulge in a better lifestyle of the upcoming generations as well. Though Facebook is at its trial stage, for now, the true concern sounds very empathetic and a boon for days to come.
