Why we become addicted to Validation

You post a photo. You check the likes. Nothing. You refresh. Still nothing. You close the app. Thirty Seconds later you open it again. Congratulations. You are now conducting scrientific research on whether people still like you.

Validation is the feeling of being recognised, accepted, appreciated or approved by other people. Wanting it is not a psychological defect. Humans are social creatures and belonging to a group has always mattered.

The problem begins when other people's reactions becomes the score board for our self worth.

A compliment feels good. A message saying I am proud of you feels good. Getting likes feels good. Being told you are attractive or intelligent or talented it successfull reels good.

Our brains learn from rewards and social approval can act as a powerfull reward. Research on reward processing has shown that social approval can activate brain systems involved in motivation and reinforcement.

And social media has turned this into a 24 hours vending machine. Post something. Wait. Get a notification. Feels good. Post again. No notifications? Suddenly you are questioning your entire personality.

The particularly addictive part is unpredictablity. Some posts gets 500 likes. Soemtimes it gets 17. Soemtimes the person you have been waiting to hear from replies immediately. Soemtimes they disappear fir six hours.

That unpredictablity can make checking even more compelling. It is similiar to that psychological principle of intermittent reinforcement: reward delivered unpredictablity can produce persistent behaviour.

But why do humans care si much about approval at the first place? Because social rejection and validation historically mattered. Bring excluded from a group can have serious consequences for survival. Humans therefore developed strong sensitivity to social acceptance and rejection.

So wanting validation is not weakness. It is partly build in us.

But should we constantly chase it? No.

Because validation becomes danger when it changes from It feels good when people appreciate me into: I need people to appreciate me in order to feel valuable.

Then critisism becomes unbearable. Silence feels like rejection. Someone's success feels like an insult.

A relationship becomes a constant search for re assurance. You start performing instead of living. You dress for approval. You work for recognition. Post for attention. Say what people want to hear. And eventually you may make decisions based less on what you actually want and more on what will recieve the best decision.

But completely rejecting validation is not realistic either. We all need encouragement. We all need love.

A person who says I don't care what anyone thinks while checking whether everyone agrees with them is not exactly demonstrating enlightenment.

The goal is not to becomes emotionally independent from everyone. It is to make other people's approval a bonus and not a requirement.