On Wednesdays we get verified
What blue checkmarks and our middle school cafeterias have in common
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5 min read
Checkmarks are having a moment.
Once the domain of lowly to-do lists and corrected homework assignments, the humble checkmark has become a status symbol.
Beginning in 2009, social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok plucked the checkmark from relative obscurity and made it the symbol of “verification” on their platforms, indicating that an account is “the authentic presence of the public figure, celebrity, or brand it represents.”
Since then, the checkmark has been a source of curiosity, admiration, and envy. Marketing blogs detail step-by-step instructions on getting verified to provide “instant social proof.” A black market has evolved, with scammers dealing in verified Twitter accounts and Instagram influencers buying their way into the insider club of so-called “blue checks.” Even academia is not immune to the checkmark frenzy, with academic articles weighing in on the relative importance of professors’ social media verification status1.
In recent weeks, the checkmark has been thrust further into the spotlight. Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced a plan to charge $7.99 per month for the once-free blue badge2. Tumblr, which is a social media platform that still exists, responded in jest by offering its users the purchase of two meaningless blue checkmarks, guaranteed to make you “an important person on the Internet.” Around the same time, Substack (the platform on which this newsletter runs) introduced its own checkmark system, assigning writers a different color of checkmark depending on their number of paying subscribers.
People have, shall we say, opinions about it. Proponents of the social media checkmark argue for the need to verify real identities online, and for the value of an easy “indicator of credibility.” Opponents lament the creation of “digital caste systems,” “unjust hierarchies,” and, as Elon Musk put it, a “lords & peasants system” that is “bullshit.”
So, what’s in a checkmark?
What is it about the checkmark? Why do we care so much who gets one? Why, in moments of self-conscious imposter syndrome, have I stared at fellow professors’ verified Twitter accounts, coveting that little blue badge?
The answer, techno sapiens, is status.
To understand how this works, let’s take a little trip back to middle school. As with most middle school cafeterias, mine was the epicenter of the school’s social fault lines. Amidst the glow of fluorescent lights and the cacophonous sound of scraping chairs and shrieking 13-year-olds, the distinction between the haves and have nots was clear. While most kids gathered in small, single-sex groups of three or four, the popular kids sat at a single, large, co-ed table. They wore the coolest clothes: the Abercrombie shrunken polo tees3 and Juicy Couture pleated mini-skirts4. They discussed weekend plans for exclusive parties and sleepovers. We stared at them in awe from behind our peanut butter sandwiches. We loved them. We hated them. We envied them.
Imagine social media as one, giant middle school cafeteria. Just like the cool clothes, and the party invitations, and the on-Wednesdays-we-wear-pink5, the checkmark is a symbol of status. An indication of power, money, and importance.
But that’s just middle school, you say. Surely, we are grown adults now. We no longer care about popularity. We’re smart enough, self-assured enough, to brush off those superficial indicators of status and focus on what really matters.
To that, I give you the science.
The science of popularity
A 2020 meta-analysis of 135 studies across over 130,000 participants confirms what many of us first noticed in the cafeterias of our middle schools. There are two types of popularity: likability and status6.
Likability is the kind of popularity conferred to those who are friendly, kind, and easy to be around. Status, on the other hand, is about power, influence, and notoriety. The gold-standard method of measuring these constructs is called “sociometric assessment.” Researchers go into schools and (with parent permission) give each teen a list of all the students in their grade. They’re asked “who do you like the most?” and told to select an unlimited number of names from the list. Pulling together all the students’ nominations, researchers end up with a measure of which students are most likable. To measure status, the process is repeated, but this time students are asked “who is the most popular?”
So, what does this research find? Well, there’s only moderate overlap between the people we deem likable and the ones we deem high status. We don’t always like people who are high status—in fact, the majority of the time, we don’t—but we’re highly aware of who they are.
These social dynamics remain remarkably stable throughout our childhood. They have far-reaching effects that play out well into adulthood and influence the ways we view the world. According to Mitch Prinstein, the author of Popular (and, full disclosure, my graduate school advisor), “Our adult brains began to form to help us survive in the hallways of high school. The problem is, we left high school long ago—and our brains never got the memo.”
Research suggests that people who are likable may fare best, experiencing closer friendships and better physical and mental health into adulthood. The problem is that we often forget to focus on cultivating the qualities that make us likable, such as kindness, generosity, and friendliness.
Instead, we turn our attention toward those qualities that indicate status. And status, with its likes and follows and blue checkmarks, doesn’t make us quite as happy as we’d assume. It’s associated with more aggression, delinquency, and substance use. Teens who are more fixated on gaining digital indicators of status (likes, followers) struggle more behaviorally, taking unsafe risks and using more substances like alcohol and drugs. And in one influential study, researchers found that 13-year-olds who were more focused on gaining status fared worse as adults, 10 years later, with more problems in close relationships, substance use, and criminal behavior.
We’re biologically wired to want a seat at the cool kids’ table, but it turns out, status isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The new cafeteria
What will become of the checkmark? Will it retain its position as a symbol of status in our new digital hierarchies? Or will its celebrity fade as it becomes available on new platforms and for a small monthly fee?
Only time will tell.
In the meantime, I’ll remain seated with my peanut butter sandwich, eyeing the newly appointed checkmarks with silent judgement. And all the while, I’ll wonder whether I should buy one, too.
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As academics increasingly use social media to promote their work, entire academic articles have been written on how universities should weigh professors’ social media activity in promotion decisions. Of course, specific guidelines have been offered for the thorny question of checkmarks. “Scholars may choose to list [on their CV] whether their social media account is ‘verified,’” the authors of a 2020 article advise, though they warn against institutions placing too much weight on it.
Our focus here is on the social media checkmark as a status symbol, but there are, of course, important uses of the checkmark for actual verification purposes. As evidenced by recent Twitter impersonations of everything from Eli Lilly to Rudy Giuliani to Pope Francis, there’s value in being able to verify people’s real identities online.
Of course, the ultimate status symbol in my preppy, suburban middle school was to pop the collar of the aforementioned polo tee, a fashion landscape upon which only the boldest dared tread. Also, pastels. So many pastels.
Hey, hello, just a quick note that Juicy Couture-lookalike pleated skirts are back in style, and Gen Z is calling it the Y2K aesthetic. Good! Good for them. This is fine. I’m just going to go apply a quick wrinkle serum and spiral into existential crisis.
This, along with the title of this post, is a reference to the 2004 movie Mean Girls. I assume everyone reading this has seen it. If not, please stop what you’re doing and go watch Lindsay Lohan’s pièce de résistance (which, we now know, was merely a warmup for her role in 2022’s Falling for Christmas).
The idea of researchers asking teens to nominate the classmates that they “like best” and are “the most popular,” even in private, sounds kind of terrible to most people. But in what may be a testament to the cutthroat social dynamics of your average middle school, most students think nothing of it.
So, most people are no better than monkeys trying to finagle their way up the tribal social ladder. ...Check!