Social Media Perspectives, Opinions, and the Illusion of Validation

Does your "serious" Facebook post really have validity?

Every opinion that has ever existed has only existed through the lens of the person who formed it. Our perspectives shape what we see as true, and those perspectives shift over time. An opinion isn’t truly tested until it is held up against another person’s worldview. Only then does it gain support, become challenged, or get reshaped into something stronger.

With that in mind, an opinion must be seen, questioned, and pushed through different perspectives before it can even begin to resemble fact. Very few people in history have ever formed an original idea that stands unshaken against time and universal scrutiny.

And yet, here we are on Facebook and across every other platform where opinions fly freely. Instagram captions, Twitter threads, group chats, and now even apps like Threads or TikTok comment sections all serve the same purpose. They give us space to talk, but they do not guarantee that what we say is accurate or universally meaningful. They only show us who happens to agree.

A social media audience is not a scientific community. A “like” does not equal evidence. Agreement only means someone shares a similar viewpoint. Honestly, I would be worried if everyone agreed with me without thinking for themselves or doing any kind of personal reflection.

If you have one hundred friends, maybe eighty are active, and your post gets thirty likes, that does not confirm you are right. Instead, you should wonder what the other fifty thought. Why didn’t they react or respond? It is a silly metric to judge truth by, yet this is often how social media assigns value. Our validation becomes based on response, not substance.

As I write this, I understand the irony.

Ideally, this opinion would reach every race, age, gender, background, and belief, and everyone would agree. But if that ever happened, it would mean I had nothing left to learn. Peace on earth sounds beautiful, but universal agreement would make personal growth impossible.

Opinions matter and they deserve respect; however, they also exist within the limits of time, culture, location, platform, and personal experience. Life itself is mostly problem solving, and when someone challenges your opinion, they are simply solving the logic of your perspective through the logic of their own.

Your social platforms give you the space to express your viewpoint, and that is perfectly fine. But when you step into heavy topics such as politics, religion, race, values, health, or identity, remember that these conversations contain countless angles. Your perspective can and will be countered. Someone will dissect it, reinterpret it, or reject it. When that happens, you will have to problem solve your stance the same way others are problem solving theirs.

Telling people how they should feel is only valid through the narrow window of your individual experience.

In my opinion, I do not want to delete friends or followers who think differently. I want to learn from them. I want perspective and understanding. The more viewpoints I hear, the more effective and grounded I become. The greatest minds in history listened to people they disagreed with, not to surrender their beliefs, but to strengthen their understanding of humanity.

This is how we grow.

This is how we gain wisdom.

This is how opinions evolve into something meaningfu