In my earlier USA Today article, I explored how emotional experience can become organized around external validation and how our sense of self can become fragile when it is no longer being mirrored. Since then, I’ve found myself thinking less about why people seek validation online and more about what happens when they don’t receive it. Why do so many of us struggle to feel good about ourselves when we are not being seen in a positive—or even “perfect”—light?
Increasingly, what many people experience as social media fatigue is not simply exhaustion from posting or scrolling, but something deeper. It reflects a struggle with identity, validation, and a fragile sense of self when alone. Being seen begins to feel necessary to maintain a sense of yourself rather than simply to connect with others.
From this perspective, social media can leave you feeling empty not only after posting, but in the space that follows being seen. The moment of recognition can briefly organize your internal experience, but it does not necessarily sustain it. What many people describe as emptiness is often the reemergence of an internal state that was temporarily boosted and then regulated through external attention.
You posted it. People liked it. The notifications came in. So why do you still feel empty?
How Does Social Media Affect Self-Esteem?
The issue is not simply that people want validation. Rather, for many people, the deeper issue is that they struggle to maintain a stable sense of themselves when they are alone. In other words, they may feel confident, worthwhile, or emotionally grounded when others are paying attention to them, but those feelings quickly fade when the attention disappears. In psychodynamic terms, their self-esteem depends more on what others are communicating to them than on an internal sense of worth that remains steady over time. Identity can begin to feel uncertain or unstable, making it difficult to hold onto a clear sense of who you are without ongoing reassurance from others.
There is often an underdeveloped internal sense of being known, valued, and held in mind that persists even when others are not physically or psychologically present. As a result, people may have difficulty carrying with them the feeling that they matter once they are no longer being seen, appreciated, or responded to. In this state, their sense of themselves can quickly weaken or fade when it is no longer being reflected back through another person’s attention. As a result, being seen becomes a temporary way of organizing internal experience, helping them briefly feel more real, more coherent, and better about themselves—but only for a short time.
In this context, posting on social media becomes more than simply sharing a moment or seeking attention. It becomes a way of stabilizing a fragile sense of self. The post, the reel, or the story becomes an attempt to feel more real through being seen by another mind. It is as if the mind says, “I exist because you are looking at me.” The notification, the like, or the comment briefly restores a sense of connection, worth, and emotional stability. But because these feelings depend on external attention, they tend to fade quickly, leaving the person searching for the next moment of recognition.
Why Do I “Perform” on Social Media?
Performance is often more than an act of self-expression. It can also be an act of self-preservation. For many people, the idea of not posting, sharing, or being seen can stir uncomfortable emotional states that quickly become difficult to tolerate, including:
- emptiness
- ordinariness
- shame
- feeling invisible or forgotten
For others, the experience is even more difficult to put into words. Without the reflection of other people, they may begin to feel less emotionally grounded, less certain of who they are, or as though they are somehow fading into the background. In this sense, performance functions as a way of protecting against these painful internal experiences by creating a temporary sense of stability and coherence.
Posting becomes part of a psychological coping strategy that helps the person feel more real, more emotionally organized, and more connected to themselves in the moment. But coping also carries a cost. The more a person relies on external attention to feel okay, the harder it becomes to develop an internal sense of stability that lasts when no one is watching. Over time, what temporarily strengthens the self from the outside can gradually weaken the ability to sustain that same sense of self from within.
Does Social Media Make Me Feel Lonely?
From a psychodynamic perspective, and particularly in the work of Donald Winnicott, social media can be understood as an environment that gradually encourages people to present versions of themselves that are more likely to receive approval than to express who they genuinely are (1). Over time, this can strengthen what Winnicott called the “false self”—a way of relating to the world that is organized around meeting external expectations rather than expressing one’s authentic experience.
Instead of sharing what genuinely feels meaningful, people can gradually begin to shape themselves around what receives attention, approval, and recognition.
This creates one of the central paradoxes of social media. In my practice, it is not uncommon to meet people who appear highly visible online yet still feel profoundly unseen, lonely, and emotionally disconnected.
Why Do I Keep Posting on Social Media for Validation?
At a deeper level, compulsive self-presentation may reflect something developmental. Many individuals may be unconsciously asking whether someone will finally see them, hold them in mind, and recognize them in a way that feels real and sustaining.
There is often an implicit hope that visibility will resolve a more fundamental sense of not fully existing in relation, or not being internally anchored in another mind in a stable way. Each post can carry an unconscious expectation that this time it might produce a sense of being seen.
These dynamics can be understood through a simple repeating loop:
- posting as a way to create presence
- brief relief when seen
- emotional emptiness when attention fades
- returning to posting again
But because the original experience is relational in nature, it cannot be fully resolved through metrics such as likes, views, or engagement. These forms of feedback may temporarily regulate emotional experience, but they do not create internal continuity of self.
Conclusion
There is something deeper here than mindfulness or internal validation. It involves a shift in how the self is experienced when it is not being externally reflected.
Healing is not merely learning not to care about likes. It is the gradual development of an internal capacity to remain emotionally real when unseen, to maintain a sense of self when unmirrored, and to tolerate ordinary existence without collapsing into shame or disappearance. It also involves the ability to experience oneself as psychologically continuous even when there is no external reflection organizing that experience.
In this sense, the central shift is not about removing the desire to be seen, but about no longer needing external visibility in order to sustain a felt sense of reality. The self becomes less dependent on being observed in order to exist in a stable and continuous way.
Dr. Anthony Mazzella is a Psychoanalyst Specializing in Narcissism.
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(1): Ehrlich R. Winnicott’s Idea of the False Self: Theory as Autobiography. J Am Psychoanal Assoc. 2021 Feb;69(1):75-108. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33845629/.
