Facebook Anticipates to Completely Retire Its ‘Like’ Button

Social media tech giant – Facebook has recently aired its plans to remove the like button and subsequently the likes count, in order to reduce what is considered ‘superficial comparison’ between members of the social network.

Even though the advantage of social networking fraughts with a number of opportunities as a universally connected unit, with it, also comes a few detriments such as an unhealthy ‘emotional connection’.

Hence Facebook’s decision against the ‘like count’ arises as a result of a continuous uprise in the mental and psychological effects social media has on the general public on a global scale. Following a research conducted by the Florida-based Behavioral Health Center, it was perceived that those who were more engaged with social media platforms are about 2.7 times more likely to be depressed.

Furthermore, a top tier tech blogging site – TechCrunch, who confronted close associates of the California-based social media company directly, relays a similar opinion towards this as it stipulated thus; 

“The problem is that people have so many fewer of those big moments, and the large Like counts they attract can make other users self-conscious of their own lives and content. That’s all problematic for Facebook’s ad views.”

Apparently its sister company – Instagram, is already in the testing phase of implementing the removal of the ‘like button’ altogether with the ‘like counts’. With plans to launch this new feature in seven countries including Canada and Brazil.

Instagram would enforce this new idea by displaying the names of some mutual friends who like a certain post rather than show the total number of likes.

Although Facebook is known to be a pioneer of today’s social networking ecosystem, experts however identify this move as a bold one that could either ‘encourage users to share posts as it eradicated the element of comparison’ nor ‘reduce the greater majority of users who have now come dwell in the recent social media ‘hype’ or ‘like’ as the case may be.

Let’s all assume the former would take because the latter bears a cost that could have the social networking behemoth struggling throughout the next decade.