‘Validate Me’ by Charly Cox is a collection of poetry based on the toxic effect that the cyber world can have on us. She speaks of personal times of vulnerability, when the only thing she wanted to see was the light of her phone notifying her that someone new had pressed like on her latest Instagram.
The need for validation from others on social media is a growing problem amongst young people today. Many would rather speak to their friends over WhatsApp than meet in person. Charly Cox is raw when speaking about her personal experiences online and her pursuit of approval from strangers on the internet. This collection of poetry is extremely relatable in today’s society; each poem will have you pausing afterwards to reflect on the nature of the digital generation and question why it is such a vital point of connection.
Her witty humour shines through in poems where she calls out catfishes disguised as models and political statements put into only 180 characters. She reflects on her need to feel good about herself and convincing others of her easy life by only putting the sunshine filled bikini photos online, rather than those damp cheeked mascara running photos we save in a private folder. She leaves herself vulnerable to her audience by laying her lows bare. She describes nights where she calls home landlines with mothers picking up just to make sure that the boy she liked wasn’t ignoring her messages.
‘Validate Me’ resonates with so many people as ‘a life of code-dependency’. Living in a digital age leaves people reliant and border-line obsessed with the small smart device in their pocket, and has us jumping to look every time we feel it vibrate against our leg. This collection of poetry by Charly Cox perfectly reiterates this feeling in a way that I haven’t yet seen. The easiness of video calling a loved one on the other side of the world or having a bubble tea delivered to your doorstep are things mean we never have to leave the comfort of our own bed again if we don’t want to. The toxic nature of the digital world is something that needs a healthy balance.
‘Validate Me’ opens up the damaging prospects on our mental states of being so reliant on these pieces of technology for validation from others, and that despite all the great and influential things that the internet can do, we should limit ourselves to the ways in which we use it and ask ourselves what we are going to gain from it each time we go to life our phones.
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