By Nathan Park

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Everyone has a story and with the help of Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, anyone can now tell it. Social media has made it possible for people to easily share pictures, videos and blogs of their adventures with their loved ones and even the whole world. It has been the spark of change that has brought people together for common causes, from animal rights to the Haitian relief fund. Unfortunately, users have taken for granted the power given to them by social media and creating unnecessary drama.

Though some pretty cool things have been done with social media, users haven’t been utilizing it to its fullest potential. Rather than posting for the sake of sharing, they do it for the sake of gaining popularity. Now it is everyone’s personal hobby to gather as many views, likes, subscriptions and followers as they can. They spend hours sitting at their computers, finding things to post and viewing posted things. They use anything that will bring them attention as bait to reel in other users’ eyes. Fishing for likes is what we call this hobby. It is a new international sport that anyone can play and almost everyone is playing it.

A popular technique these “fishermen” use is casting their unchecked emotions. People have been posting frivolously what they think and feel at any given moment, vomiting as much emotion as they can fit in a digital box. They don’t stop to think about what they are saying half the time and their posts end up becoming rants.  All the spontaneous emotions that paint the walls of these sites bring a lot of drama to the atmosphere and sours a friendly environment. Social media should be a place where friendships and bonds are made, not broken by dramatic conundrums.

The most popular and effective bait of all is image macro or memes. Today, all a user has to do is search online for catchy phrases and pictures and share it on their profile. It’s convenient, free and the best part is you don’t even have to make anything. To guarantee views, fishermen tag their friends to the meme.

This exploitation of other people’s work and ideas is wrong. Essentially, users are plagiarizing other people’s work to gain popularity and people now feel they don’t even have to think on their own to become respected.

In addition to spending most of their lives on the web, these fishermen brag about their catches at school. We’ve heard people flaunt how many followers on Tumblr they have or how many people subscribe to their YouTube channel. This turns blogging into a competition, rather than a medium for self-expression. If you connect with people you don’t really know via social media, you will most likely attract narcissists. The type of people looking to make quick connections do so to stack up their numbers. What is the value in a huge network of strangers? “Attention,” commented Anne Ward, co founder of Circle Click, a social media advertising website.

With everyone gone “fishing for likes,” what once was a place where friends and family could connect and keep in touch is now another pedestal for people’s egos. However, it doesn’t have to be like that. We can stop this egocentric culture by changing our own attitudes. Instead of thinking about how many likes a post will get you, think about how many people it will affect and how it will affect them. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube can reach millions of people so it is no wonder that so many new movements have started from social media. That being said, users should be aware of the power they have to create change.

Social media has enabled people to collaborate and share new ideas in a matter of minutes. When those new ideas receive likes, they become more visible to the world and become a major influence to our culture. So instead of posting for popularity, let’s post to improve the world that we teenagers will soon inherit.