Smartphones became constant companions and social media replaced playdates and real-life friendships, shifting childhood from playgrounds to platforms. Validation on platforms depends on likes, shares, and follows, producing conditional and superficial value that can make youth feel invisible or excluded. Comparison and fluctuating engagement communicate that worth depends on performance, fostering anti-mattering, anxiety, depression, and loneliness, especially among teenage girls. Mattering requires both feeling valued and adding value through contribution to others, and social media often undermines both. Offline communities and shared family moments provide trust, love, and evidence that young people matter beyond online metrics.
I was fortunate enough to have had Dr. Haidt as a lecturer during one of my classes at the University of Pennsylvania. For that class, we had read his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, another great read where Dr. Haidt (2006) shows that lasting happiness comes from balancing love, purpose, and personal growth. In The Anxious Generation, Dr. Haidt (2024) discusses how a shift has occurred in childhood and adolescence since smartphones have become constant companions, and how social media has replaced playdates and real-life friendships.
And with that shift, many of the conditions that help young people feel they matter have begun to deteriorate. Here is how social media often undermines both sides of mattering: a. Feeling valued Platforms offer validation through likes, shares, and follows-but that validation is conditional and often superficial. When engagement drops or comparison kicks in, the message becomes: "You are only valuable if you perform." Worse, many youths feel invisible, ignored, or excluded-what psychologists call anti-mattering (Flett et al., 2021).
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