New Love Languages

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 Season 8, Episode 20: Jerry is dating a woman named Valerie who, based on the quality of their dates, ranks Jerry on her speed dial – a set of nine programmable phone numbers that can be called in one click instead of the requisite seven. 

He starts decently at seven after their first date, falls to nine after a bad one, and rises to one after bringing his romantic A-game, so to speak. Describing the situation to his best friend George, he notes, “The speed dial is like a relationship barometer”.

Speed dial was intended to facilitate connection with individuals one calls frequently. Its first instance was developed in the Bell System (owned by the Bell Telephone Company) over two decades in Succasunna, New Jersey, as part of the Electronic Switching System (ESS). The ESS enabled three main features: three-way calling, call waiting and speed dial.

Notably, the function of speed dial as a ranking of intimacy is not self-evident. It was not intended in its original design, nor was Jerry – or anyone else not using Valerie’s phone – supposed to be privy to this particular use. It’s an example of how technology’s original use cases can be diverted when they intersect with intimacy and communication.

The episode’s climactic tension emerges when Jerry reaches the number one spot and unknowingly replaces Valerie’s stepmother, who had been working for years to hold the top 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) or another interaction marker can cause distress among users. By the emoji system in Snapchat, I mean the symbols placed next to each of a user’s main friends on the platform, which allow for a programmatic ranking of one’s different friends.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, these emojis wreaked havoc on the lives of many teens worldwide, as they highlighted differences in levels of friendship and, in many cases, romantic interest. To have “pink hearts” was a reciprocal marker of continued digital attention – the proof that this scarce commodity was being committed to another person.

The loss of this symbol for people romantically involved is jarring. In a digitally mediated world, what does it mean to no longer be someone’s main recipient of digital attention?

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

In modern parlance – the concept of love languages originated from Gary Chapman’s 1992 book 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 someone’s content—whether that’s posting heart-eyes emojis under your girlfriend’s posts – is, in a way, another form of validation that newer generations increasingly seek.

Research from Arizona State University (Sharabi, 2021) on 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 widely:

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 into three main categories:

1. Affection and Relational Signalling 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 and Digital Affection 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 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 signalling, 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. The issue is that people ascribe many meanings to these paralinguistic affordances, and some use them simply in phatic ways – merely to acknowledge or to make their presence felt.

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

This indicates that there are a variety of interpretations for the same simple digital interaction. The difficulty in interpreting digital interactions is that they are not performed in a fully socialised context. In other words, we are on our phones by ourselves, and therefore we don’t get the general social feedback that would clarify the meaning of our actions.

For example, when we wave at someone in a crowd or when a friend sees two people exchanging glances across a bar, others notice and imbue that interaction with social meaning because it’s visible. A friend might say, “I saw you looking at that guy,” or “I saw you wave” and – even if teasingly – assign the gesture a shared meaning. Online, we behave outside immediate feedback; not in full anomie, but in an accentuated state of social ambiguity.

When one likes an Instagram story, the action is usually done alone – and because it occurs in isolation, it cannot be imbued with a common, shared meaning. A wink across the bar is identified by others and is clearly understood as flirtation because the gesture is perceived publicly and exists in a social context. The Instagram Story Like, done under the veil of relative digital secrecy, lacks that shared 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 about signalling: affiliation with a community, a declaration (see: hard launch) or mere courtesy (it would be rude not to follow back someone you see frequently).

When the choices are private, as in the case of Instagram Story likes, the potential meanings expand – ranging from relational signalling to social affection to 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 introducing noisy and unclear signals, while being positioned as potential markers of intimacy. We can understand, based on these factors, why such interactions are so fraught. There is, of course, nothing humans love more than ambiguity and the consequent anxiety.

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.

Appropriately, Ruby Justice first posted this on Instagram.