Social media has become the cultural training system that teaches people how to evaluate themselves, other people, and ideas — and many Americans are paying the price for it.
Concerned individuals rightly worry about its effects on anxiety, depression, and self-esteem. But beneath those concerns lies a deeper question: What happens when a society begins treating popularity as the sole indicator of value? And what happens when people increasingly come to view one another not as neighbors, collaborators, or fellow citizens, but as competitors for attention, status, and recognition?
This is often framed as a problem affecting young people. In reality, social media has reshaped status, identity, and recognition for almost everyone. Children are simply the most vulnerable because they are still forming a sense of self.
Older generations grew up in a world where visibility was limited by physical presence. Social media altered that structure radically. It introduced the possibility that ordinary life could become publicly visible — and that almost anyone could become a public figure through virality. Moments once private can now be recorded, shared, and judged by strangers. The veil between private and public life was torn, creating a persistent awareness that we could always be the subjects of attention.
For many people, social media is no longer just communication. It is where belonging, status, and worth are negotiated. Likes, shares, and followers are the evidence that one is valued and their thought-life is valid.
Popularity can be informative, but it is not the same as merit. Yet the result has been subtle and powerful: people increasingly stopped asking whether something was true or meaningful and started asking how it performed. Every post became an audition. Every opinion, a branding decision. Every seriously composed expression of individuality became tied to the existential risk of abandonment.
Growth depends on curiosity, experimentation, and the freedom to be wrong. Yet many digital environments reward the opposite. Conformity is often safer than originality. Young people quickly learn which expressions gain approval — and which disappear without response. Seth Godin puts it plainly: “If it is art, it is not for everyone. If it is for everyone, it is not art.” Could we have fallen prey to the delusion that our most intentionally constructed expressions of ourselves must please every potential onlooker now and forever?
This matters because education is meant to cultivate critical thinking, independent judgment, and reasoning that does not depend on social consensus. Yet many online systems encourage the outsourcing of that judgment. Sociologist Robert Merton described the Principle of Accumulating Advantage: those who already have tend to accumulate more. Social media intensifies this dynamic. Visibility compounds upon itself.
The consequences extend beyond education and into our capacity to innovate. Breakthrough ideas in science, art, and public life rarely come from the most visible people. They emerge from the margins, where individuals are willing to question assumptions and think differently. A culture that rewards popularity over substance narrows its intellectual range — and quietly discourages many of the people it most needs.
There is also a psychological cost. Creativity is a source of resilience. When creative effort is consistently ignored, people lose not only recognition but a powerful source of psychological vitality. Many people stop trying to connect with others or exercise their creativity in a meaningful way if they feel ignored.
In the age of artificial intelligence, this becomes even more significant. As AI makes content creation nearly limitless, judgment, originality, and depth become more important than sheer output. Yet a culture that equates popularity with value may become less capable of recognizing those qualities.
Attention is the resource over which social media users compete. These platforms are arenas where voices compete for visibility, influence, and status. Those habits do not remain online. They spill into everyday life, encouraging people to see others as rivals for recognition. In any competitive system, there is pressure not only to elevate oneself but to diminish rivals. Online pile-ons, reputational attacks, and public shaming function as mechanisms of social suppression in the very arena where many young Americans direct their most insistent yearning for status and success.
This should concern us not only as a cultural matter but as a strategic one. At a time when rival nations are directing talent toward science, engineering, and exploration, many Americans are increasingly encouraged to compete for attention.
This helps explain a quieter harm of attention-driven systems: the alienation of the underrecognized yet merit-worthy contributor — not defeated in argument, but starved of acknowledgment. Not engaged. Not amplified. Not affirmed as a fellow human being. When the cost of support is nothing more than a mouse click.
There are a lot of those people around. They were left behind by either the algorithm or by or by the stratagem of their “friends.” Perhaps we should start thinking about ways to value them better? America is not the land of the free and the home of the brave without them.
Mark McCormack is a Ventura County library professional whose interests include ethics, culture, creativity, science, and the impact of emerging technologies on society.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Are we a society that confuses popularity with value? | Your Turn
Reporting by Mark McCormack, Your Turn / Ventura County Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Mark McCormack, Your Turn | USA TODAY Network
