Since my freshman year of high school, I have been obsessed with how many likes my Instagram pictures get. I felt like it was always a competition to me, whether or not I would get more likes than my friends. However, as I got older and entered college, I realized that literally no one cares how many likes your Instagram pictures get, but you. I have no idea why I cared so much about who or how many people liked my pictures, maybe it was a feeling of satisfaction or a boost in confidence. Maybe I just wanted certain people to see it, but I shouldn’t have cared about that at all. It was bad for my mental health to check excessively who had liked my picture right after I posted it. The feeling of looking and seeing that you got 100 fewer likes than you normally get is quite painful for your ego. I felt embarrassed sometimes to get fewer likes than normal because I felt like people would judge me, which now that I think about it, probably never actually happened.
No one should down anyone or make fun of them for how many likes they receive on an Instagram picture. If you get 300 likes and your friend gets 100 likes, that doesn’t make you any better than your friend. Also, because you have a lot of Instagram followers, it doesn’t mean that lots of people will like your photos. I learned that the hard way. But as I grow older, I have come to realize that I cared way too much about what people thought of me. Obviously, I still care about what people think of me, I feel like it is hard not to, but I am working on that. The first thing I am starting with is by posting whenever and whatever I want on social media. I don’t care anymore if people will think that my posts are silly or extra. If I want to post a picture of just my dog, or a sunset, or an aesthetic picture of a bookstore, I should be able to, because the only person that should care about what you post on social media should be yourself. Post what makes you happy and what makes you enjoy being on social media. There is no fun in social media if I am just going to keep checking my phone to see how many people liked my picture. From now on, I am posting what makes me feel good about myself, regardless of what I think people will think of it.