“I view likes as modern currency,” he said. “Whenever we receive likes, it acts as a reward in our brain like any other reward.”

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, Turel noted. The issue with likes is the scale at which people interact with them, and when that becomes a competition.

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“If you are engaging in social comparisons, and you are saying, ‘That person got 150 likes, and I only got three likes,’ the research has demonstrated that leads to negative mental health,” said Dar Meshi, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, who studies how we process socially communicated information.

Instagram has been testing versions of hiding like counts since 2019, initially freaking out some users when it seemed like counts might get turned off for good. But the company, and its parent Facebook, landed on a more middling optional approach for everyone.

Professional influencers, who use social media to promote their brands and often make money by partnering with businesses, were some of the most outspoken against the plan to turn off like counts when it first popped up. Many influencers get paid by how many likes, views or comments they get, and completely getting rid of the metric could have drastically altered the industry.

The companies are also leaving metrics intact; no matter the users’ settings, people will still be able to like other posts, and users will be able to see the like counts on their own posts even if they choose not to make them public.

Many people don’t bother to change social media settings anyway, so it’s likely most people will leave like counts on as they scroll.

Letting people choose seems to be the best of both worlds, Instagram found.

“It’s a little strange to be mad that someone else has the option to do something that you don’t want to do yourself,” Mosseri said.