Just twenty years ago, a person could go for weeks without receiving any letters. Their phone would remain silent, their mailbox empty, and no one would see this as any kind of tragedy whatsoever. Moreover, silence was considered a normal part of most people's lives while they were occupied with work, family, and daily concerns. The absence of messages was not perceived as a judgment of one's character.

Today, the situation has changed almost beyond recognition. For example, it is enough to publish a post and not receive the expected number of likes, or send a message and not see a reply for several hours, to feel anxious. For many, digital silence has become a painful signal, because the absence of a reaction is increasingly perceived as an absence of interest.

The paradox is that we live in an era of unprecedented connectivity. Never before has a person had so many ways to get in touch with other people. Yet, it is right now that more and more people are complaining about feelings of loneliness and their own uselessness.

For millennia, human survival depended on belonging to a group. Exile from the tribe meant almost certain death. Consequently, our brains learned to react extremely sensitively to any signs of exclusion from the community. This ancient system continues to operate today, even though the world around us has long since changed.

In the digital age, the fear of exile has transformed. Now, a person fears not so much physical isolation as social invisibility. This anxiety manifests itself in everyday little things. Some people check their notifications every few minutes, react painfully to an unread message, compare the number of reactions to their posts with the reactions of others. Others are convinced that if no one has written to them first for a long time, it means they have been forgotten.

What is especially dangerous is that digital silence begins to be perceived as personal rejection, and the absence of a reply turns into proof of one's own insignificance. A neutral event acquires an emotional meaning that, in reality, may not exist at all. A person starts looking for reasons within themselves — the fear of being uninteresting, devalued, and so on. This is how one of the most characteristic anxieties of our time is born: the fear of disappearing from other people's field of vision.

This is a psychological trap. The more a person links their own worth to the attention of others, the more dependent they become on the reactions of others. And any addiction, sooner or later, begins to control a person more than they control their own life.

For most of history, a person understood who they were through real achievements and real relationships. Status was determined by profession, family, experience, knowledge, and reputation among one's peers. Respect had to be earned through deeds, and recognition was built over years.

The digital era has not abolished these mechanisms, but it has offered a much simpler way to measure one's own significance. Today, it is increasingly assessed through the number of subscribers, views, comments, and likes. The more reactions a person receives, the more valued they feel. The less attention they receive, the more they begin to doubt their own worth. A single post without reactions is perceived as a personal failure. Several unread messages turn into proof of one's own uselessness. The person begins to see themselves through the eyes of algorithms and gradually loses the ability to evaluate themselves independently of the attention of others.

Today, that "dose" has become notifications. Many believe that worrying about likes or messages is a manifestation of the spoiled nature of modern people. However, research in psychology and neuroscience shows that the situation is much more complex. The need to belong to a group is one of the fundamental human needs. For millennia, survival depended on the ability to remain part of a community, which is precisely why the brain learned to react very quickly to any signs of exclusion.

Interestingly, for the nervous system, there is not always a fundamental difference between physical and social rejection. Social pain activates many of the same mechanisms involved in the experience of physical pain. This is why being ignored can hurt us so much, even if objectively nothing terrible has happened.

The brain's reward system also plays an additional role. Every notification, comment, or new follower becomes a kind of signal of possible reward. The brain releases a small amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with the expectation of a reward. But it is important to understand that it is not so much the reaction itself that causes pleasure, but rather the anticipation of it. A person publishes a post and starts checking their phone, then checks it again and again. Each new glance at the screen is accompanied by the hope of seeing confirmation of their own significance.

Over time, expectation turns into an independent psychological need. This is why the absence of a response can evoke disproportionately strong emotions. For the rational part of the mind, it is just an unread message. But for the emotional system of the brain, the situation looks different — "I am not being noticed, I am being ignored, I am being excluded from the group."

As a result, digital silence begins to be experienced almost as painfully as real rejection. And the more a person links their self-esteem to the reactions of others, the deeper this dependence becomes.

Perhaps the main problem of modern man is not that no one really notices him. Something else is much more dangerous: the person himself begins to measure his own worth by the amount of attention he receives from others. The more often a person seeks confirmation of their significance in external reactions, the more dependent they become on circumstances beyond their control.

Likes run out, posts lose their relevance, messages remain unanswered — that's just how life works. But this says nothing about the person's actual value. Alas, many begin to confuse a temporary lack of attention with their own uselessness, and digital silence with personal failure.

Social networks have given us a wonderful opportunity to be constantly in touch, but at the same time, they have created a new psychological trap. In it, we strive more and more to be noticed, and less and less often ask ourselves a more important question — "Do we notice ourselves?"

It is necessary to understand that the real feeling of one's own significance is not born from the number of notifications on a phone screen. It is formed through real relationships, real actions, real achievements, and an understanding of who you are, regardless of others' judgments.

Perhaps this is why the most important skill of the 21st century is becoming the ability not to lose your sense of self-worth in moments when the world temporarily stops looking at us. Because a mature personality is determined not by the amount of attention it receives, but by its ability to maintain an internal anchor even when it becomes uncomfortably silent all around.

Kazbek AKHMETOV,
Psychologist, Doctoral Candidate

at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (KazNU)

Zanmedia.kz