We tend to be guilty of this. You take a hot selfie, or a fun picture while you are traveling, or with your best friend. You add all the right filters and adjusting the lighting, the saturation, the warmth. You think of a witty, creative caption for your picture. There is an entire process to this, and what for?

Likes.

Social media has been a good and bad thing for people. We can now communicate with our loved ones from essentially all over the world. We can stay educated on current events. Social media has allowed us to stay in the loop.

Maybe we are to far into the loop.

We are all guilty. There are times you hear a rumor about someone and immediately stalk the person's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and all the other forms of social media. We spend countless number of hours looking over other people's accounts wishing you looked like them, or got to travel like they do, or have cool experiences like the person you are looking at on the screen.

Social media takes over our lives more than it should. We are constantly scrolling through feeds of each others' status, shares, pictures. We share every little detail of our lives on social media. It's just too much. We either contribute to the constant loop of information or we spend hours absorbing it.

But here's the thing. Social media only captures what you want it to.

It is not often that you see someone post something negative on Instagram. It always seems to be all smiles, paradise, good times, and all the good moments in our life. Outlets like Instagram do not capture real life. The number of likes you get on a picture does not measure the value of your life.

I recently wrote an article that got some attention, and I had a close friend make a comment with a great message.

"Social media has brought so much more pressure than ever before to do things at a certain time, in a certain place, and everything has to be picture perfect...follow your hearts, not Instagram."

She is so right about this too. Social media has pressured many of us into believing we are falling behind the status quo. What our friends are doing with their lives are making us over evaluate our own life. To be truly honest, our steps in life should not be based on what everyone else is doing around us. You have your own destiny, just as I have my own destiny. Social media is great for keeping up with our friends and family, but don't let it control who you are and what makes you happy. You are not, and will never be measured through likes on a photo.