We live in an age where social media is a constant feature of our lives. We depend on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to express ourselves and more notably, to communicate with others locally, nationally, and even globally. In this regard, social media is a convenient tool that provides users with different and beneficial opportunities.

On the other hand, it seems as if social media has shaped the way people view others. Take Instagram as an example. One of the first few things that we take notice of when looking at someone's profile is the number of followers he or she has while the second thing is the number of likes he or she receives on each post.

10K FOLLOWERS WHILE SHE ONLY FOLLOWS 200? 500+ LIKES? SHE MUST BE SOMEONE SPECIAL.

A lot of people are under this impression that having a certain number of followers and likes will achieve them popularity, perhaps because they lack that in their real lives. There is an assumption that people with many followers are perhaps more likable or more important.

I get it. People want to be liked. They want to feel appreciated. I've been there, done that. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't care about how many followers I have, how many likes I receive, or who follows me or not. I hate to admit it, but I also know that this is true for many others. I have come to understand though that these things say absolutely nothing about the very thing that determines whether we actually like people or not—character.

You may come across pictures on your feed that seems to show people living their best lives while getting a ton of attention. Then you compare their life with yours and start to focus on what you don't have. Stemming from this way of thinking, people fall into a hole of insecurity and begin to accept that idea that the external surpasses the internal.

Social media, especially in the cases of social influencers and users with thousands of followers, isn't a true reflection of reality. Someone with a large following may have fake friends while someone with a smaller following can have lots of friends in real life. This just proves that there are so many more important things in life that genuinely speak to the content of our characters than our social media popularity. We should focus more on how we make others feel than how many followers we can accrue. We should understand that it is much better or more profound to be respected for who we are as people rather than who we appear to be on social media.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that it's okay if you don't have thousands of followers or hundreds of likes. I am embracing the idea that social media does not represent who I am as a person. What's more important is how you represent yourself in the real world than in the digital world.