But does it mean anything?

In an attention economy, there is a difference between meaningful connection and engagement.

We all see posts with high engagement. They reverberate through a platform. With thousands upon thousands of emojified reactions. Posts that everyone in the group has interacted with. Did that interaction convert to a connection? Does clicking ‘Like’ represent the experience you had? Meaning is correlated to effort: the manifestly real part of that experience was a few taps, maybe with a wrist flick.

Let’s take responsibility for valuing our connections with people. For people that matter, make the effort match the care. Hopefully someone has gone out of their way to make you happy at least once. Thoughtful actions that someone invests time and energy into mean something to us. A really crappy mug a child makes for a parent is the best mug in the world. Anyone with empathy is sentimental. Our social networks are built around those instincts and that biochemistry.

Central to classically liberalism is the idea that we are individually responsible. Every science we study tells us that there is no free lunch. Liberty carries a cost: responsibility or liability. System scientists are exploring fascinating ideas around feedback. In complex systems, like humans and our societies, there are emergent phenomena. Those affects directly change the environment that then affect individuals. Enough people choosing to value others lived experiences and amplify goodness will cause a feedback of the same. Think of it like sociological follow the leader.

When we want to share an experience having a way to communicate is a tool. It is amazing that around the world you can hit a like button to acknowledge somebodies’ experience. You could also write a thoughtful comment. Or reach out and start a conversation around it. Sometimes we lack bandwidth or simply do not care and ignore it. Sometimes it will stick and you will remember it for later. All those actions manifest how much you value the information. Outside of the digital realm there are even more ways to value an experience that someone has shared with you.