Social media is a part of our everyday lives. When you're waiting in a long line, the passenger on a car ride, or just bored, you will usually find yourself scrolling on some form of social media. A good balance between social media and real life is no harm, but when social media begins to take over who you are and how much you interact with real life, it starts becoming toxic.

You can look on any social media and you will find the edited pictures (we’re all guilty), the pretty vacations, happy family photos, and the “perfect people” who have “perfect lives.” Then we look at our own lives, and they start to seem so blah. I

t almost becomes a popularity contest too, we compare followers and then even judge people based on their followers. That’s where it becomes insanity to me. We already judge people based on how many people they know when we’re in school (the popular crowd, the in-betweeners, the “nerds,” etc.), so why is it necessary to carry it over to social media?

The answer to that is that it’s not necessary. The amount of friends or followers you have does not matter, and it does not in any shape or form define who you are. Changing who you are or making yourself out to be someone you’re not just for social media to gain followers will never fulfill any of the insecurities you have about the real you; if anything it will just form a deeper hatred and start an obsession towards social media and perfection. The Instagram models you find on your feed every day have admitted to unhealthy eating habits in order to reach a “standard.”

Alexis Ren, a model who gained popularity with her 11.9 million Instagram followers, admitted last year that she was not healthy and found herself in a “toxic state of mind.” Her full story was published on Cosmopolitan.

Other Instagram influencers have also come out about their struggle with balancing social media and told their stories about their loss of perception of reality and their unhealthy habits. Essena O’Neill, another Instagram influencer, quit social media back in 2015 because she found it was taking away from her real life. She changed all of her captions on social media and created a video on letsbegamechangers.com that explained her full story. So why do we still try so hard to reach their status?

There’s more to life than how many people know who you are, and if the first thing you think of when you’re looking at a beautiful view is “I need to get a picture of this to put on Instagram,” then maybe it’s time to reevaluate what’s important to you. The moments you live every day will always hold importance to you, but if you are living them on your phone, you will never fully experience them. Social media is good for a lot of things, but using them obsessively can become toxic very fast.

I’m guilty of obsessing over those “perfect” Instagram pages, and wishing I was on the other end of the phone. When I start feeling down on myself though, I remind myself that their lives aren’t perfect and my life is filled with plenty of wonderful things too. Putting yourself through crazy things just to be accepted and well-liked on social media will eventually catch up to you, and that’s why it’s important to send out the message that your social media profile does not make you.

The number of followers you have will not show your sense of humor your friends love, the number of likes you get on a post will not show how compassionate you are, and your "Instagram theme" will never make you a better or worse person. The only person you should ever be on social media is you, full-heartedly 100% you. All of this won't matter to you (or anyone else that's following you) in the end. What will matter is how you treat the actual people around you, and how you treat yourself.