Instagram. I love it. Don’t you? But if you follow your teenagers on there, along with the duck faces and mirror shots, you see a whole lot of:

#likeforlike

#commentforcomment

#followforfollow

Teenagers scream out for affirmation, and in turn they give it to others.  Just look at how popular it is.

At first I thought this was a pretty silly idea.  Are you so desperate for people to “like” and comment your pictures, that you will use a hashtag and then like a bunch of other strangers’ stuff?

But then I realized:

1. It achieves their goals.
2. So it’s really not that bad of an idea.
3. We kind of do that as  blogging youth pastors.

So what do you guys think? I’m thinking that for every like, comment, or share that I get on a post either here or on YouthMin.Org, I’m going to go to that person’s blog and show them some love too.  I blog so that people can read it and interact with me, and if someone DOES (which can be pretty rare…ha. crickets), then I want to interact with THEM.  Act out what I believe about blogging being a communal thing.

My friend Jeremy over at 78Productions started a “Commenting Army.”  I am one of about 15 bloggers who vow to read and comment every week on each other’s stuff.  You don’t have to make such a commitment  BUT I encourage you to reciprocate some of the love you receive on YOUR blog.

So what do you think?  Teenagers aren’t so crazy, huh? ;)