More Instagram Likes = More Happiness?

By Manav Babbar

 When I first created my Instagram account, I was filled with a tonne of excitement. Almost instantly, I started posting photos. When I posted my very first photo, I was thrilled to see all the notifications come pouring in. My first photo got 12 likes – I thought ‘Wow that’s great!’. My next photo got 13 likes, then 11 likes then 12 likes and I was thrilled with this. Fast forward one year later… Today I opened up my Instagram account to find out that I have got 60 likes on the last photo I posted. By all accounts (pun intended), I should be over the moon! But I am not. Over the course of the past year, I have got more and more likes per photo. With really great photos, I would get over 100 likes. I had come to expect more and more out of each post I uploaded. At one point, I was happy to get 12 likes for every photo I posted but now when I am getting over five times that number, I am not satisfied. Why? There is a bigger picture at play here and it has something to do with our happiness – hedonic adaptation.

Hedonic adaptation is a theory that states that humans tend to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness. As our expectations rise, our desires increase as well. The result? No long-lasting increase in wellbeing. This is why, in the long run, we are not happier when we get more material goods, more money and more followers. Now of course money is a slightly different from likes. Likes do not keep the electricity on or put food on the table. Everybody needs their basic needs met. However, once these are met, it does not matter! Numerous studies have been done to show that over a household income of around £57,000, people do not become happier.

A huge example of hedonic adaptation at play is a psychological study done in 1978. This study evaluated the relative happiness levels of recently injured paraplegics to those people who had recently won the lottery. As expected, the recent lottery winners were chuffed immediately after they had won and the paraplegics felt very down. But within the duration of just two months, both groups had returned to the average level of happiness.

‘No Way! How can this be even possible?’, I thought.

It turns out when somebody levels up to a higher level of material convenience, the ability to enjoy things that one previously loved is lost. Having a cold Carlsberg after a long day at work used to be a real joy for the lottery winner. However, when he left his job after winning the lottery, he started drinking expensive whiskey, poured by his personal butler. Both of the drinks serve the same purpose and the pleasure that they give to the individual is around the same. Likewise, when one moves down the hedonic scale, whether that be voluntarily or involuntarily, one can learn to appreciate the more simple things in life in just the same way one would cherish more expensive things. I genuinely love the sound of my old BMX bicycle that I got in secondary school, slicing through the quiet wind on an open road, just as much as a CEO loves the loud vroom-vroom of his fancy new Mercedes.

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