![]() ![]() Do likes lead young people to compare themselves to celebrities and their friends, in a way that damages their self-esteem? Do they encourage posts that skew more inflammatory, or more sexual, than people might otherwise make? Are they too easily manipulated by bot farms and coordinated campaigns? Many of the major platforms have tested out hiding or deemphasizing these metrics, yet they remain stubbornly ubiquitous in our digital lives. Social media tycoons have been wringing their hands for years about the incentives their products create. The worthiness of a post or a video or even an entire profile, comes down to how many times it was seen and enjoyed. Some things are priceless-the look people give each other on their wedding day, or the memory of a great vacation-but on social media we assign those moments value anyway, quantified in “likes.” It costs nothing to double-tap a square image on your Instagram feed, but the action holds a currency nonetheless. Humans love to assign value to things: the price of a gallon of milk ($3.55), the merit of a movie (89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), the worth of an hour’s work ($15 minimum, in California).
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