Seventeen year-old Ethan Youngs checks his phone while sitting in his dining room Sept. 30. Ethan spends a lot of time on his phone each day checking multiple social media sites including Twitter and Instagram. photo by Julia Hammond

by MaryMichael Hough, photos by Julia Hammond, video by Maddie Knopke and Cecilia Butler

Sophomore Sophia Prochnow taps the Instagram app on her phone and waits patiently as the home page refreshes. A selfie of a blonde girl with a bright white smile pops up with an inspirational quote as the caption. The amount of likes immediately catches Prochnow’s attention, 221 in just 15 minutes.

With the recent rise in popularity of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook comes the rise of certain well-known names. Local teens such as Miege junior Ethan Youngs have become household names to STA students on social media.

“I would never in a million years know who Ethan was if it weren’t for social media,” Prochnow said.

According to senior Kennedy Reller, what is going on in these teens’ lives and the way they portray themselves on social networking sites makes them interesting to others.

“I definitely consider them to be famous in the Kansas City high school area,” Reller said. “So many people from STA, Sion and Rockhurst know who they are.”

Youngs can’t recall when the amount of friends and followers he had significantly rose and does not believe there is a specific reason as to why so many people took interest in him.

“I don’t think there was a dramatic event that caused me to stand out,” Youngs said. “It was honestly over a really long period of time. There are just a lot of little things that can cause people to follow you.”

Youngs started out like any other middle schooler looking to be able to share photos and see what others were up to via the internet.

“I started Facebook in sixth grade,” Youngs said. “Obviously I didn’t take it as seriously then because I was a sixth grader, but as I aged, my statuses began to get more personal and I started to post more often.”

Youngs’ personal statuses caused his Facebook friends and followers to notice the effect they had on other people and the comments the statuses began to attract.

“I feel like he puts his whole life on social media for everyone to see,” Reller said. “I mean, I don’t think I would do that because in some way it makes him more vulnerable and open to conflict.”

According to Youngs, although some negative comments were expected, some have gone far enough as to threaten his life. He believes that people post these comments to get a reaction out of someone and most of the time they are successful in receiving a comment back.

“Once you hear [negative comments] enough, you kind of grow intolerant to them,” Youngs said. “Sometimes they bug you and then other times you realize that it’s not something someone would truly say to your face. I feel like people who aren’t in the same position as me don’t understand it, and that’s why they make fun of me or insult me.”

According to Reller, Youngs is not the only well-known teen who receives negative comments and notices harsh words have become very familiar on social networking sites.

“I would never put myself out there as much as others do because people are really mean to them and I don’t get why,” Reller said.

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Many of Youngs’ followers are neither negative, nor positive with comments and there seems to be an even spread of supporters and non-supporters.

“There are people who don’t like me, there are the people who do like me and then there are the people who just like to mess with me but don’t necessarily have a problem with me,” Youngs said.

According to Youngs, it is hard to connect with people who are also well-know on social media because you never know if a person is actually who they say they are. Many people might not actually exist and others are difficult to trust.

“I would say I’m not close friends with people who are in the same position as me,” Youngs said. “I’m friends with people who I can genuinely trust. I really like to keep myself level headed with people I actually know.”

Although Youngs does not consider himself to be famous, he does notice being recognized outside of social networking sites by followers that he does not know.

“I see people in public all the time that I don’t know, but they’ll just like tell me they know me or I’ll hear my name being whispered back and forth.”

Prochnow has seen Ethan in person and immediately recognized him from Facebook and Instagram.

“I saw Ethan at Chick-fil-A and got really excited,” Prochnow said. “Then I realized that I didn’t actually know him and he had no idea who I was. I felt super creepy.”

According to Reller, she would like to meet the well-known teens that she follows on social media and would maybe even want to develop friendships with them.

“I feel like they would be nice people if you actually got to know them but people just follow them for the surface,” Reller said. It would be interesting to know them on a real level to see what they’re like.”

When asked if Youngs ever wished that he did not have as many followers, he was quite sure that social media did not define the person he is.

“I don’t think it has had that big of a toll on me,” Youngs said. “Like, it’s not the common way to go from being in sixth grade to being a junior, but there’s definitely not that much of a difference between me and another teenager who’s not on social media.”