Youngers seem to think that without a social media existence they have no existence. Social media sites promote such thinking or certainly do not disabuse it. After all, subscribers, users, and members are monetized. The young social media needful comprise the fuel which tech capitalism consumes to thrive. Before social media few doubted their existence. It was, after all, generally no less or no more obvious than that of those around them. Comparative samples were, in any event, necessarily geographically restricted. A 12-year-old had no means by which to compare themselves with a 12-year-old in the next town, let alone state or country. Now, they find themselves comparing their media-centric lives from New York to Beijing to Perth to London to Kashmir to Sol to Tokyo to Paris and so on and forever on.
Popularity is no longer a school yard phenomenon. It is based on the universal and all geographic encompassing reach of likes and views. Not only has the definition of popularity changed, but the scale by which it is measured and the velocity at which it is gained or lost has been asymmetrically expanded. Bearing no relationship to any ratios other than the number of people who have internet access. While Orwellian negative stereotypes are especially rampant when the impact of big data gathered from small humans is discussed, this phenomenon is not all bad (I strenuously hope). For it has also asymmetrically shrunk the planet. In some ways, these social media apps have created holographic communities within which there is a tendency to find commonalities and a corresponding tolerance for coexistence among shared values.
My point? The young are not so desperate just because we think them so.