Instagram Story Likes and Markers of Digital Affection

User research on the meaning of Instagram Story Likes

With every new technology, we find new ways of showing affection. With every new technology, there emerges a new love language.

In the 1997 Seinfeld episode “The Millennium”, that method was the speed dial. A quick recap for those who haven’t seen Seinfeld Episode 20 Season 8: Jerry is dating a woman named Valerie (played by Lauren Graham) who based on the quality of their dates ranks Jerry on her speed dial, a set of 9 programmable phone numbers which can be called in one click instead of the requisite 7. He starts decently at 7 after their first date, falls to 9 after a bad date and rises to 1 after bringing his romantic A-game, so to speak. In his description of the situation to his best friend, George, he notes, “The speed dial is like a relationship barometer.”

Speed dial was intended to facilitate the connection to individuals whom one calls frequently. Its first instance was developed in the Bell System (owned by the Bell Telephone Company) over two decades in Succasana, New Jersey, as the Electronic Switching System or ESS. The ESS enabled three main features: three-way calling, call waiting, and speed dial. These simple improvements to the user experience of telephone calls have radicalized the way we interact with one another. Three-way calling allowed the strengthening of multi-nodal friendships through tripartite gab sessions. Call waiting (source of many classic 90’s sitcom mishaps) afforded rapid context switches between two parallel conversations. And, of course, speed dial, apparently, permitted the ranking of relationships on a 1 to 9 scale.

Notably, the function of speed dial as a ranking of intimacy is not self-obvious. It was not intended in its original design nor was Jerry or any other individual not using Valerie’s phone frequently supposed to be privy to this particular use. It’s an example of how technology’s original use cases can be diverted when it intersects with intimacy and communication.

The episode’s climactic tension emerges when Jerry reaches the number one spot and, unknowingly, replaces Valerie’s step-mother who had been working for years to be in the pole position. This loss is reminiscent of the contemporary discourse around Snapchat ranking emojis and how the loss of a streak (an indication of daily communication on Snapchat) or one of the interaction markers engendered distress in its users. By emoji system in Snapchat I mean the symbol placed next to each of the user’s main friends on the platform which allowed for a programmatic ranking of one’s different friends.

Here are some of the symbols:

💛 Yellow Heart — You are #1 best friends (#1 BFs) with each other. You send the most snaps to this person, and they send the most snaps to you.

❤️ Red Heart — You have been #1 BFs with each other for two weeks straight.

💕 Pink Hearts — You have been #1 BFs with each other for two months straight. Dedication!

😎 Face With Sunglasses — One of your best friends is one of their best friends. This means that you send a lot of snaps to someone that they also send a lot of snaps to.

😬 Grimacing Face — Your #1 best friend is their #1 best friend. You send the most snaps to the same person that they do. Awkward.

😏 Smirking Face — You are one of their best friends…but they are not a best friend of yours. You don’t send them many snaps, but they send you a lot of snaps.

😊 Smiling Face — Another best friend of yours. You send this person a lot of snaps. Not your #1 best friend, but they are up there.

Per a report by the Wall Street Journal, these emojis wreaked havoc to the lives of many teens around the world, as they highlight differentials in levels of friendship and, in many cases, in romantic interest. To have “pink hearts” was a reciprocal marker of continued digital attention, the proof that this scarce commodity was committed to the other person. The loss of this symbol for people romantically involved is jarring. In a digital-mediated world, what does it mean to no longer be someone’s main recipient of digital attention?

In spending time learning how people are using technology in their love lives, a recurring question encountered is: “What does it mean when someone likes my Instagram stories?” (Hundreds of Reddit posts on the topic)

In modern parlance — the concept of love languages originated from a 1992 book by pastor Gary Chapman “The Five Love Languages” — there are five love languages: acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation, gifts and quality time.

Arguably, digital interaction has emerged as a new love language. To be seen digitally is akin to being touched physically, in the sense that it is one of the many ways one can show love. To interact with one’s content — whether that be posting heart eyes emoji under your girlfriend’s posts — is, in a way, another form of validation that now it seems newer generations seek.

Research from Arizona State University (Sharabi 2021) about romantic digital activity also indicates “that partners in romantic relationships use these digital affirmations as signs of affection” and that “couples who were more satisfied with their relationship were significantly more likely to engage with each other on Instagram — for instance, by posting about each other and by commenting on or liking each other’s posts.”

The danger with digital interaction is that we know its quantity, but not its clarity.

I recently ran a survey (N=32) on Instagram and interviewed active Instagram users (N=5) asking participants what “Instagram Story Likes” meant to them. The answers ranged wildly.

1. “Let’s hang out”

2. “I’ve been meaning to reach out”

3. “I am romantically interested”

4. “This content is cool or funny.

5. “Nice”

6. “General acknowledgement”

7. “Showing friends virtual love”

8. “Unabashed flirting”

9. “Hello”

10. “Positive reinforcement”

11. “Thank you”

Based on the answers, Instagram Story Likes can be grouped in three main categories:

1. Affection & Relational Signaling: These are likes that signal closeness, intimacy, or romantic interest. These interactions extend beyond the content itself: the like is a proxy for attention and attraction, functioning as a digital form of courtship or relationship initiation.

2. Social Maintenance & Digital Affection: These are likes that maintain friendships and signal care or support without necessarily implying romance. Here, the like operates as a phatic gesture (in linguistic terms): a way of saying “I see you, I’m here, we’re connected”. It affirms the bond and continuity of the relationship.

3. Content-Based Appreciation: These are likes that respond primarily to the post itself rather than the person. This category treats the like as a lightweight reaction to media, more aligned with cultural participation and shared amusement than with interpersonal intimacy.

This tripartite meaning — (1) relational signaling, (2) social maintenance, (3) content appreciation — maps onto what communication scholars describe as the ambiguity of “paralinguistic digital affordances” (likes, hearts, emojis). The same act can simultaneously belong to more than one category, which is why Instagram Story likes so often generate confusion in their interpretation. (See: Wohn, Carr, Hayes. How Affective Is a “Like”?: The Effect of Paralinguistic Digital Affordances on Perceived Social Support. 2016.)

The problem is that people ascribe many meanings to these paralinguistic digital affordances and some use them in “phatic” ways i.e. merely to acknowledge or to make their presence felt.

This confusion has existed since the beginning of social media. In their investigation of friendship in LiveJournal, Kate Raynes-Goldie and Fono (2005) found a similar ambiguity in why people friended each other. They reported that “Friendship stood for: content, offline facilitator, online community, trust, courtesy, declaration, or nothing.” boyd (2006) echoes a similar lack of clarity in her own investigation of why people friend on MySpace and Friendster.

This indicates that there are a variety of interpretations of the same simple digital interaction. The difficulty in interpreting digital interactions is that they are not performed in a fully socialized context. In other words, we are on our phones by ourselves, and, therefore, are not getting the general social feedback about the meaning of our actions. For example, when we wave at someone in a crowd or when a friend sees two others kind of looking at each other across the bar, there are people around to notice that interaction and therefore it can be imbued with social meaning because it is visible to others. The friend might say I saw you looking at that guy, I saw you waving at that person, and, even if cheekily, imbue the action with a certain meaning. Online, we behave outside of immediate feedback, not in full anomie, but in an accentuated state of social ambiguity.

When one is liking an Instagram story, the action is usually done in a solitary fashion, and, because the social interaction is done in an isolated fashion, it cannot be imbued with a common and shared meaning. A wink across the bar is identified by others and is clearly understood as flirtation because the gesture is perceived by a crowd and exists in a social context. The Instagram Story Like is done under the veil of relative digital secrecy and does not have that common meaning. As danah boyd notes in her paper “Friends, Friendsters, and MySpace Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites,” social choices made on platforms are “deeply influenced by the technological affordances of a given system and their perception of who might be looking.”

When the choices are public, their function tends to be around signaling: affiliation to a community, a declaration (see: hard launch) or mere courtesy (it would be rude not to follow-back a person you see frequently). When the choices are private, as in the case of Instagram Story Likes, there is an expansion in the potential meanings (relational signaling, social affection, content appreciation), bolstered both by the unique relationship between the two individuals and by the lack of social clarity around the paralinguistic gesture. In spite of their easy quantification, these new modes of interaction complicate interpersonal communication by integrating essentially murky and unclear signals, whilst being positioned as potential markers of intimacy. We can understand based on these factors why these interactions are so fraught. There’s, of course, nothing humans love more than ambiguity and the consequent anxiety.

I must say there’s something charming in remembering that, with each new feature, each new update, each new release, we’re learning a new love language, together, all at once.

Please like and share this post. I’ll know exactly what you mean.