By 
“Validation addiction” is not a recognized term in the addiction or mental health community. It is a term that the author has created to describe a phenomenon that seems to be more and more frequent in our current society.
Validation Addiction is a behavior in which the person is in a constant search for others to help them feel worthy. Low self-esteem is one of the fundamental factors of people who constantly seek validation. Another common factor among those who became so involved in the addictive search for validation is that many of these people were totally invalidated when they were young.
It is very important to note that validation addiction is largely an unconscious behavior. This means that the person does not consciously know that he is actively seeking validation in order to enhance his self-esteem or her sense of self-empowerment.
Validation Addiction can appear as the husband who spends hours online chatting with other women, while his wife is sleeping or otherwise busy. It may seem that the person spends too much on clothes to be fashionable. You can seem like the politician who gets overly dramatic to make a fearful point by attacking the opposition. It’s evident in politicians like the former congressman who spent hours texting other women and then denying it.
Validation addiction can show up as people looking for compliments on their job, their hair, their new weight, or their beautiful children. You can appear on the Facebook addict, who is constantly adding intimate details and photos of your life.
It can appear in many ways, and yet there is a caveat. To be an addiction, the person’s behavior must have a negative consequence, or negative consequences, at some point in their life as a result of that behavior.
Validation is defined as the act of validating; to find or prove the truth of something, or prove the soundness of something. Some synonyms for validation are: substantiation, proof, endorsement, authentication, certification and documentation.
When it comes to applying the word validation to human behavior, it would mean that someone is looking for or needs to corroborate, support, or prove whatever it is you are projecting.
For example: a man who has achieved great notoriety as a lawyer, may flaunt his success by wearing extremely expensive suits, watches, shoes, and flashy cars to gain attention and admiration from the rest of the legal profession in his area. A famous musician or athlete can flaunt his success through public displays, which may or may not seem appropriate, but definitely draw attention. Are they looking for a healthy or addictive validation?
There are definitely healthy ways to seek validation, and many of us do them every day. Seeking validation for a scientific project, a breakthrough in medicine, a house plan, a dress design, a kitchen design, and many other examples are healthy validation seeking approaches to certify or authenticate a project.
A child seeking validation as to whether or not he is following directions is often a support-seeking child in a healthy way. A worker who consults with her team, coworker, or boss to see if she is on the right track on a particular project is seeking validation in a healthy way. These examples usually indicate that the person has good self-esteem.
Many people are unconsciously acting out repetitive behavior that gives them some acceptance, approval, recognition, power, notoriety, or validation that he or she is “special.” When a person is engaging in attention-seeking (validation-seeking) behavior, and the behavior causes a problem in her life somewhere, then she is probably acting compulsively or addictively. This almost always indicates low self-esteem.