Take a photo. Edit it. Take five minutes to get your friends’ opinions and approvals. Check the time to make sure it is a “busy” time for social media and–if it isn’t–wait until it is. Finally, “share.”For the next half hour, check your phone every other second to make sure that the “likes” are piling in, and voila: your self-esteem is secure.

Instagram is an online photo-sharing social network that enables its users to take pictures, apply digital filters, and share them with their friends. Over the last three years, it has become one of the most popular social networking systems among teenagers in the world. In December of 2010, Instagram had over 1 million registered users. By September of 2011, it had reached over 10 million.

But is Instagram just a bunch of kids taking pictures and sharing them with the world, or has it become more? Nowadays, teenagers are basing their own self-esteem off of how many “followers” and “likes” they get on this network. Teenagers can’t deny that the more likes you get on your pictures, the better you’re going to feel about yourself. “It’s all about the image of your profile,” says VHS senior Christine Farawell talking about how her Instagram tells a lot about a person.

“It’s a bust if I get under 70 likes,” says Frankie Greco, another VHS senior. Most Instagram users would be more than pleased with so many likes, but for Frankie, 70 likes out of over 800 followers isn’t enough to please his self-esteem. Everybody has an expectation or a goal of how many likes they would like to receive on a picture. Some may be a 100 likes while others may just be 20. Whatever the goal is, people immediately feel better about themselves when their goal is obtained.

“Yeah. If you don’t get a lot of likes, people judge you,” explains Madison Misuro, a junior at VHS, discussing the pressures of uploading pictures on Instagram.

“It does affect my self-esteem because obviously it wasn’t good enough for people to like,” says junior Courtney Hofmann, who explained the depressing side of uploading a picture. For example when one uploads a “selfie,” one has the expectation that all of the people that think they are pretty or good looking will like it. Well what if that picture does not become very popular? Imagine how that makes a person feel. Or if maybe you have a crush on someone and they do not like that picture of you. It is going to hurt your feelings and make you feel as if they are not good enough.

People are obviously going to say, “Oh it’s just a social network and pictures, who really cares,” but it is more than that. Believe it or not, Instagram has the power to completely change one’s feeling on that day.

Ironically, students are quick to say they think people are bothered when their photos are not liked, but reluctant to admit that they themselves care whether or not they are popular on social media.

“Yes. Everyone is self-conscious about being popular. Everyone always second guesses themselves,” says junior Tommy DeNicola. This all goes to show how self-conscious teenagers have become due to social media. Whether people will admit it or not, networks like Instagram are having a bigger effect on teenagers than they realize.