Dr. Wes Crenshaw and Kyra Haas

Wes: In April, a day after we published the application for the next coauthor of Double Take, my daughter and I were eating breakfast and reviewing my Twitter feed. I had several new followers including @kc_haas from Free State High School, a blonde girl holding a pygmy goat. “Interesting,” I told Alyssa. “I wonder if she might be applying for the column. Looks like she’s in 4-H.” Few teen girls hold goats on Twitter.

We followed the link to her blog and started to read, me on my phone, Alyssa on her iPad.

“Wow,” Alyssa said. “Her writing is good.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She certainly has a style. But she doesn’t actually seem to raise goats, just carry them around.”

When Kyra Haas applied a week later, I emailed her: “Smart girl. You figured out a way to get my attention. But that doesn’t win you any contests. Good luck.”

In the end, however, Kyra brought the same smart writing we’d seen on her blog and Twitter to a very difficult essay contest and narrowly beat out two of her best friends and several other applicants.

I’ve gotten to know Kyra well over the summer. She and Katie Guyot (coauthor 2012-13) workshopped my novel and she’s already done radio with me (see www.dr-wes.com). Kyra brings to Double Take a wry, insightful wit, a spirit of excitement about the topics we discuss, and a way of being that I can only describe admiringly as idiosyncratic. And she’s one of the most likable teenagers I know. She can talk (or text) your leg off and never run out of interesting things to say while, at the same time, being a great listener and voracious learner. She is not, however, in 4-H.

Katie told me early on, “Kyra is special. There’s no one else like her,” and as always, Katie is a great judge of such things, because, above all else you will like about Kyra, she is a person of great character.

Kyra: I stare grimly at my latest Instagram post. Only 23 likes. The corners of my mouth droop. I scroll past several artsy Starbucks cups, two heavily filtered sunsets and a blurry cat before I reach another selfie: “How can SHE have 157 likes?” I feel as though that girl’s peace sign fingers just curled into a fist, broke through my iPhone’s glass screen and punched me in the gut. One hundred thirty-four people appreciate her face more than mine.

These moments are common in the life and times of social media me. I’m not sure if my snazzy new Double Take photo does justice to the lovely collection of early-onset worry lines zigzagging across my forehead, but the lack of Insta-love only deepens them as I consider the approval of social media users across the globe.

“Why doesn’t everybody ‘like’ me?”

Apparently, I am not alone. A recent study from the Institute of Information Systems at Berlin’s Humboldt University says one-third of Facebook users feel depressed or dissatisfied after scrolling through their timelines. The number one reason why? Comparison of personal social life to that of their “friends.” The second? Dissatisfaction with the amount of feedback received on posts when compared to others. Today it is far too easy to become personally defined by the number of people who “like” a picture of your puppy.

People put their ideal lives on social media, minimizing hardship and overplaying what was probably a boring vacation. Don’t be fooled. Everyone else isn’t living in a field of unicorns, sunshine and rainbows. That’s just marketing–what they want you to think.

We should instead, step back and see social media the way its creators and early users intended it: as a platform for fostering community, sharing innovation and collaborating with like-minded people–not as an outlet for self-comparison and deprecation.

Though I’ll promote Double Take this year on my social media accounts and constantly monitor the link clicks and other interactions, I’ll do my best to take my own advice and not let the number of “likes” weigh too heavily on my mind or my opinion of myself.

Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, is author of “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD.” Learn about his writing and practice at dr-wes.com. Kyra Haas is a Free State High School senior who blogs at justfreakinghaasome.wordpress.com. Send your confidential 200-word question to ask@dr-wes.com. Double Take opinions and advice are not a substitute for psychological services.