So you took a selfie, and you want to put it on Instagram. But what if you don’t get any likes? Or what if you lose followers? Or what if that girl down the hall complains about how it’s the third selfie you’ve put up in the past two weeks?

But what if you like it?

Do you look at that picture of yourself and feel confident in your skin? Yes? Then post it.

We live in a society centered around technology and social media, two things that could really help make this world a better place yet we often use them for such disadvantageous means. Rather than focusing on how we can us these tools to come together, we’re practicing ways to tear ourselves apart.

Moreover with social media we cannot escape. We cannot have a moment to ourselves without a Snapchat from a friend, a tag on Facebook, or a comment on Instagram. All eyes are constantly on us, and that’s the problem.

We are so concerned with what others will think of us that it quite literally takes us a half hour to edit a picture and make sure it’s the “right time to post," just to decide five minutes before that we can’t post it “because it’s the second picture of the ocean in the past five days” or it’s a picture from yesterday and we already posted a picture of that. We’re afraid that if we post another selfie that people will see us as conceited, or that if share our view on political issues we’ll lose followers.

But who cares? Quite frankly, I’m sure Melissa from your chemistry class is a nice girl and all, but what does it matter if she’s annoyed that you posted yet another picture of your dog?

It’s your Instagram.

It’s your Facebook.

It’s your Twitter.

It's your life.

If you want to update your status that you just ran three miles, go for it! If you want to tweet about how good your brunch was, by all means! And really, if you want to post another selfie, be my guest!

Your social media accounts are yours for a reason. If you don’t feel uncomfortable posting a “progress picture” of you at the gym because that’s not who you are, that’s fine. But please don’t do it because you’re afraid what that boy in your Spanish class will think of you.

They say our generation looks at likes as a form of currency and that is truly a sad thought. Likes do not define worth whatsoever. If you like a picture, it doesn’t matter if it gets five likes or 10,000 likes. The picture is a memory for you to remember a fun tim, or capture your good hair day or freeze monumental moments in your life.

We need to work together as a generation to stop Instagram shaming, and likewise, social media shaming in general. It is important that when a girl wants to post another picture of her and her boyfriend she doesn’t feel judged. Or if a boy wants to share a quick selfie he took while feeling fresh this morning, he doesn’t refrain because he’s afraid his peers will make fun of him.

We are “generation like,” and I believe it is important that we make that brand into a positive one. What if we used social media to inspire each other, support each other, and bring each other together?

Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I think we as a generation have so much more to offer than judgmental comments about each other’s social media posts.