 Welcome back to another beautiful day during mental health awareness month and in this video we're going to be discussing how Instagram announced that they're doing some tests about removing likes from the platform and why people are freaking out and make sure you stick around to the end of this video because I'm going to explain why I've turned off likes and dislikes on all of my videos. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel I do some commentary trying to see what's going on in the world and see if there's any lessons that we can learn from them and something that I'm very passionate about is mental health so if you're into that stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and since since we are on the topic of Instagram today make sure you're following me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. I love chatting with all of you engaging with all of you getting video ideas having discussions and everything like that so make sure you're following me at the Rewired Soul alright but yeah let's talk about Instagram removing likes and then we'll kind of talk about why people are freaking out try to get into the psychology of this thing and some possible reasons why people are freaking out and why everybody needs to maybe chill out a little bit and do a little introspection if you will alright so this is actually a story that I was made aware of by watching the Philip DeFranco show the other day and Instagram they they haven't like fully rolled this out yet alright but I think it's interesting like whenever a social media platform is testing anything like people lose their minds I've seen it happen on YouTube a million times they'll test things out with like thumbnails or like the trending page and recommended things and they'll just like do some A and B tests and people lose their minds but anyways Instagram is to my knowledge I believe they're only testing it out in Canada for some users what they're doing is removing the likes so people can't see them alright I'm not sure all of the details of it I'm not sure if the creator can actually see the likes or not but Philip DeFranco actually talked about how Jack Dorsey the founder of Twitter has thought about this as well okay but one of the many reasons that Instagram discuss is how how the likes are affecting people's mental health and there's a million different topics that we can spring into about social media and how it affects people's mental health but in the context of just Instagram specifically there's been a lot of research a lot of studies and it's just human nature of how Instagram affects people okay and a lot of it is one of my favorite sayings which is we we judge our insides based on somebody's outsides so what that means when talking about Instagram is we're constantly comparing our lives to others right Instagram is mainly visual okay and people are using things like Facetune or they're just photographing like their best moments and everything like that and it can cause a lot of people to look at it and judge their own life based on it because they're comparing which is something that you should never do because social media is a place where people post their best moments I have I have known I have known so many people in my life who were absolutely miserable but if you went through their Instagram like they're just they're they're posting like they're living the best life on earth right like just always remember when scrolling through social media we're all human I don't care how much money you have I don't care what race or gender or whatever you are we all have struggles okay and it's just some people don't post their struggles online so never think by looking through Instagram or any other social media platform that you are the only one struggling and this person lives this fantastic life all right but people are freaking out about this people are freaking out and I'm gonna try to talk from both point of views of the consumer as well as the creators right so creators are freaking out because well here's the thing a lot of them are freaking out saying that it's gonna be harder to get brand deal sponsorship deals and things like that because one of the things that they show as far as their own analytics is their followers and their likes now I think that's a part of it but something that a lot of people won't open up about publicly is that a lot of people are looking for that validation these numbers are tied into validation and there's a lot of people out there who aren't even like social media influencers who are freaking out like I need to see my likes I need to see my likes because so many of us tie who we are as a person our self-worth and everything like that to these numbers okay I was actually having a conversation with my beautiful girlfriend Tristan this morning and like we were talking about MySpace back in the day and she reminded me like back in the MySpace days like it was gauged on how many how many friends you had right and if you were to do a one-to-one comparison of MySpace to Facebook like someone's amount of friends on Facebook doesn't necessarily mean like they're super popular like some people just add everybody on earth like I can honestly say on my Facebook there's a good chunk of those people that I haven't talked to in years right but on all social media platforms there has been some way to kind of gauge how how great or how popular that person is and it's something I often think about too as a YouTube creator something that I try to look at and analyze and everything like that when I'm looking at other videos and how they're getting views and everything like something I think about is are people more likely to click on a video that already has a lot of views my theory is yes because seeing a video that has a lot of views on it already you're kind of curious it's kind of like if you're walking down the street and you just see a huge crowd of people like surrounding something and you kind of want to peek in and be like yo what what's going on what's what's happening over there right so a lot of people are freaking out about this now something that's not talked about enough is all social media platforms just about every major social media platforms have people there who are trying to figure out ways to get you hooked I talked about this in a video I made the other day about YouTube but all social media platforms are designed to keep you on their platform as long as possible okay there are people who have been I don't even know if I necessarily called them whistleblowers but there are people who have worked at these companies who talk about how they have specific departments that are designed to try to figure out how to people get people hooked on their platform so they did a study and the NPR interview on this a while back where they hooked some teenage girls up to FMRI brain scans so they can monitor the brain activity of them and they they monitor them on Instagram and whenever a person got a like on Instagram they got a little a little spritz of dopamine so dopamine gives you pleasure it is a neurotransmitter in your brain so one of the reasons people say like oh that person's a dope fiend or whatever is because drugs and alcohol release dopamine well what they have found is that these things on social media likes comments retweets followers whatever it is every one of those notifications gives you a little dopamine hit so what I'm sitting here and I'm watching people freak out about Instagram possibly removing likes like I'm a recovering drug addict I've been clean almost seven years I'm like oh my god these people look like fiending addicts right like don't get rid of my likes don't get rid of my likes you know like I need them but it makes sense because one of the reasons that addicts go through withdrawal is not only when the drugs or alcohol metabolize out of their system and their their brain is saying you need more but just even the thought of the future not getting drugs anymore can make a drug addict go into panic right so like when I'm sitting here I'm watching this I'm like holy crap I seeing how many people are actually freaking out about Instagram possibly removing likes from their platform now one of the other issues that I see on all social media platforms is that people are working for the likes for the views for the comments for the subscribers for the retweets and I think that's why you see a lot of people post really dumb stuff right like on on like Twitter or on Instagram or whatever because people are hoping that they're gonna their next thing is gonna go viral and there's a whole psychological theory about why like like even gambling is addictive like some things are more addictive when the results are up and down or sometimes it's amazing and then sometimes it's not right so a lot of people are just posting things like oh man I wonder how many likes or retweets this tweet is gonna get and they'll try to make it sensational or outrageous or whatever it is and one of the things that Instagram talked about is too many people are doing that a lot of people are gearing away from like creating actual content that they love and they're trying to see how viral it can get you see it on the YouTube platform all the time creators are always trying to one up themselves and get as many views or whatever you know and a lot of creators who struggle with mental health issues we've seen it a million times like one of the number one things you'll hear from YouTube creators about their mental health being affected is that they stopped making content that they liked all right so think about how that's affecting people's mental health when they're just only pushing out content whether it's on YouTube or Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is just to get those numbers here here's some of the theories that I have I believe and you can let me know your thoughts down in the comments below I believe that people are freaking out because a lot of people in their real lives lack power all right a lot of people feel maybe it's at their job maybe it's you know in society maybe it's in the country they feel as though their voice is not heard and one of the things that will mess you up the most is when you feel like you don't matter like your voice is not heard so I believe that a lot of people freaking out about disabling likes so you can't see them they're freaking out because that takes away some of their power every time a person likes something I believe and I wish maybe there's some kind of experiment I could do to test this theory out but I believe that they're just like this is their little hit of power like when they like something boom they had some power when they don't like it boom they have some power right and it makes sense because so many people lack lack power in our society especially you know in the united states and other parts of the world and maybe it's just even in your in your household where you don't even have an opinion on things right so I think the threat of that being taken away and having your voice you know not even silenced or muted but just kind of dampen a little bit I think that's messing with people's heads so like I promised you in the intro of this video like I'm going to discuss real quick why I turned off the likes and dislikes on my youtube videos so I had a little bit of a controversy a couple months ago and something that was happening was people were just doing these drive-by dislike bombs right just coming in not even watching the video just dislike like screw that guy screw that guy and it would just kind of snowball right and I sat there thinking I sat there thinking I was like are people is one of the factors are people disliking these videos because they see how many other people are disliking these videos so I wanted to kind of figure that out so what I did was I turned off the likes and dislikes on my videos now to debunk a few things I had one not one person I had multiple people comment this and somebody said why did you turn off the likes to dislikes on your videos how are you going to know if you're making content that people like well to let you all know as a creator I can still see all the likes and dislikes I can see them you can't next thing I've seen a lot of people ask why did you turn off the likes and dislikes now there's there's some people who ask this out of curiosity so I'm answering that now but they're the majority of people I'd say 70 to 75 percent of the people asking about the likes and dislikes they are the people who I believe are the people who would do the drive-by dislikes right or dislike all the videos and these are people who I believe are upset with me for turning off the likes and dislikes because they feel like I took away some of their power right but the other thing that comes to mind when I think about this thing is it's almost like you want to see that number to know if your opinion is right right because we have this craving for confirmation bias where we want to know that we're part of the the tribe part of the group oh oh a lot of people dislike this I dislike this too so if you can't see that how do you know if you're voting the right way but think about that think about the presidential elections like are you only voting because other people are voting that way are you making your own decision you see what I'm saying so think about that for a little bit I don't know if I'll ever turn them back on it's just been really fascinating I like I I like doing little experiments and stuff like that and just seeing human behavior and how it works out but at the end of the day my theory was correct because when I turn off the likes the dislikes the dislike bombs stopped and my likes are actually way up than they used to be before so take with that what you will like you can let me know down in the comment section below let me know why you think the likes started to go back up and the dislikes went down once I made it so people could no longer see them let me know down in the comments below or let me know what your thoughts are on Instagram removing likes and everything like that I just actually tweeted out um if you want to reply there I said you know something along the lines of like imagine all these social media platforms were created and none of them had any kind of numbers to base anybody's you know social status on no no followers no subscribers no likes no comments no just nothing like how do you think that would kind of affect you psychologically if you can go back in time and just completely erase that off of these platforms where do you think your mental state would be all right but anyways that's all I got for this 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