In middle school where my graduating class had 18 kids and we all grew up together, I pretty much never concerned myself with being popular. Of course I noticed some of the people in my class were more social with each other than with me and they had different social lives than I did. I remember always bothering my friends to hangout more or to have sleepovers or whatever just be able to say I did the things they did.
In high school,I felt better because I met more people,I made more friends and I was happy there. There was never a "popular" group at school. Everyone made their own circle of friends and no one ever really had a problem with that. It was nice because everyone felt like they had a place. But as I made more friends and as I checked Facebook I noticed people gaining more likes on their profile pictures and have people constantly post on their wall. I thought to have a successful social life or to be happy, I needed to have those things. I can't tell you how many times I looked at profiles to see how many people liked their profile picture and trying to figure out what made them so different from me. We knew most of the same people. I just didn't know what to think.
As I continued with trying to be considered, I don't know, "cool", "interesting", "appealing", whatever you want to call popularity, I just could never seem to get what I wanted. And I based all of that, how well liked I was and what type of person I was, on likes. It's crazy to think it now. I was never totally obsessed with having the most liked Instagram photo, but I would still get a little down when not that many people liked something I posted. I really wanted some type of approval; especially since I came from a small school and wanted my high school experience to be just like what I had seen on TV or in the movies.
Eventually, I got over it and realized that I don't need to be "Internet liked". I thought if more people liked the things I posted on social media, the better off I looked. More likes meant more people noticed me. I realized that the people who get the most likes and have the most online followers are no different from me; and I am no different from someone with less likes and less followers than me. How many selfies you post or how many followers you have doesn't define who you are.
I always tried to be myself because I didn't know how to be anyone else and it ended up working well. Sure, there are days when I can be a little too infatuated over other peoples profiles and what they're doing, but at the end of the day I know I have friends by my side that will always be worth more to me than an Instagram picture with a bunch of likes, a Facebook post with a lot of comments and likes, or even an article with over 100 shares.
