Why is comparison the thief of joy?
- Aidan Mong
- Sep 15
- 3 min read
“Co-comparison is killing me slowly,
I think I think too much
Bout kids who don’t know me,
And I’m so sick of myself,
I’d rather be, rather be
Anyone anyone else
But jealousy, jealousy
Started following me.”
If you’re anything like me, this Olivia Rodrigo song became a whole lot more relatable during the pandemic. As my world expanded from a graduating class of 7 in eighth grade to a graduating class of 650 in twelfth grade, I got a lot more insecure. About everything. The way I looked, the clothes I wore, how many friends I had, even the music I listened to. It happened again when I got Instagram and my friends got a glimpse inside my camera roll. I was anxious about which pictures I was showing them and how many. I was worried about which song to put over the post and if it was the right verse or not. I wasn’t used to having so many people suddenly be able to see me.
The more people I compared myself to, the more I was experiencing what’s called “upward social comparison.” This is basically when you compare yourself to people you perceive as “better than you.” That can manifest itself in various ways: they could be richer, prettier, have more friends, have your dream car, have a significant other while you don’t, and even curate more aesthetic Instagram posts. Unfortunately, upward social comparison is practically unavoidable (unless you live a Walden-esque life), and the neurological response to it sucks.
Response to comparison primarily arises in the reward system, and it’s more a response to relative rather than absolute success. That sounds a little confusing, so let’s break it down. Say you and a friend post on Instagram at the exact same time about the same thing, and your friend’s post gets more likes than yours. But here’s the catch: proportionally, you guys get the same amount of likes relative to your total followers. Your brain, however, doesn’t recognize that, and instead, you feel a little jealous that your friend got more likes than you. This is because areas in your brain closely associated with envy and pain are activated. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), to be exact. The dACC is associated with pain response, meaning that the feelings of jealousy and envy we experience in upward social comparison could be real, visceral pain responses.
Also, upward social comparison resets our expectations. For example, going back to the Instagram example, if your friend receives more likes than you, your expectations for a successful Instagram post are raised. You suddenly feel that to be successful, you need to get x amount of likes on your posts. This translates to pretty much any context, and with the rise in popularity of social media, it’s becoming more and more common.
I totally get that this can sound like one of the “get off your dang phone, you’ll be happier” lectures, but the people who say that aren’t entirely wrong. Social media creates unrealistic social feedback. It leads to this idea that everyone you see is doing amazing all the time, which just isn’t true. Everyone’s going to have good days and bad days. They just don’t post the bad days. Social media also exacerbates the negative consequences of upward social comparison, leading to more activation of the dACC, and more feelings of jealousy.
So how can we mitigate these negative responses?
The short answer is we can’t. Every time we hop on social media, or see a person doing “better” than us, our brain is going to have that same visceral response. Like Thanos, it’s inevitable. But we can recognize when we start to feel those feelings of jealousy and realize that it’s just our silly dACC telling us that we suck. Which just isn’t true. So, tell your dACC that you’re doing fine, and thank Olivia Rodrigo for that super relatable song.
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