If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million and three times. Social media is ruining millennials. Millennials are ruining the world because of social media. Social media kills brain cell. Heck, it would not surprise me if there was an article out there, somewhere, in the great web that claimed that social media is the cause of global warming. Well, social media and avocado toast, but that is an issue in and of itself.

Whatever negative impact our phones has on our brain cells, social skills, or even the environment, I think that we are far past the question of whether we should or should not use social media. We have created and situated ourselves into an era where Facebook is a norm, Twitter is commonplace, and Instagram is a must. Instead of asking for phone numbers, we ask for Instagram handles and Snapchat codes. We show our crushes how crazy we are about them by maintaining a snap streak or commenting a fire emoji on their newest Instagram post.

This activity can be considered narcissistic, unnecessary, a sad disgrace for social skills, but the fact remains that it has become reality. Instead of arguing that we should put down our phones to look up, or say that posting a selfie assumes that a teenage girl has crossed a line into self-centered egotism, I'd rather talk about my own experience with social media.

I'm not the person who is necessarily attached to my phone. I can wait to see what a girl I went to high school with but never spoke to posted on Instagram, and I genuinely couldn't care less about the gross-looking smoothie you concocted just to rave about FaceBook to brag about your #healthyliving. But that doesn't mean that I don't use social media, because I do.

I've accepted the fact that I need to have learned the social norms of navigating social media, for the post part. In particular, I'd like to list a few unspoken rules of social media as pertaining to Instagram.

First: Don't post too much, or else you'll clog your followers' feed. Second: Don't post too little, or you won't get followers, and you won't get likes. And we all know that how you are defined as a person relies heavily on the number of likes you get. But you also can't pretend that you actually care (we all know that we all care, but pretend that we don't). You can show skin if you'd like, post about your boyfriend, or post a picture from a party, but you need to be careful. You can only do that if you're skinny, your picture isn't risque (but not too conservative, either), and you don't come off as self-absorbed or as promiscuous.

And to think that this just scratches the surface of the rules for Instagram. To post a single picture, you need to check off a list of boxes, which seems absurd.

To what affect? Well, even as someone who cares very little about my presence on social media, and even less about what the girl I sat next to in homeroom sophomore year of high school thinks of me, it gets into my head sometimes. I worry that my smile in a picture doesn't look exactly right. The gap in my front teeth shows too much for my liking, I look like I have five chins and no neck, or my stomach bulges out because of the angle. We are constantly bombarded by images that tell us how to look. We need to be fashionable Instagram models who wear Gucci slides to go to Target, always have a full face of makeup, and always seem to look perfect.

Sure, standards have been around since the beginning of time. We compare ourselves to others to constantly pick out what makes us self-conscious, but now it is a constant flow of reminding yourself that you could bare to lose five pounds, that your hair will never be pin straight, and that you don't have the money to afford designer clothes.

But you're still you, and I think you're pretty darn cool.