Have you ever wanted to be famous? Lots of young people are taking the opportunity to get recognized on the internet because of the opportunities that come with fame. 

Junior Caden Haywood is huge on social media. He has almost 3,000 followers on Instagram and over 80,000 followers on TikTok. He makes funny skits with random scenarios and music that goes along with it, and the videos blow up.

 His most popular video has 3.8 million views and over 600,000 likes. He has over 2.7 million likes total from all his videos. 

“People like my content so much because I’m handsome and I’m funny,” Haywood said. “The ladies love it and the fellas laugh.” 

By the looks of this comment section, he gets great feedback about his videos. Haywood has hundreds of videos demonstrating his creativity. 

“It makes me feel good that a lot of people see me after I blew up and I started putting out more videos to make more people laugh.” Haywood said. “I didn’t really have an inspiration to start TikTok, I just posted videos to viral trends and they blew up.”

Silas Mathis is another student at MHS who is big on social media, with almost 15,000 followers on TikTok, and over 1,200 followers on Instagram. He does dance videos and funny skits that get a lot of views. Across all of his videos, he has over 540,000 likes.

“I provide funny content, do stuff that happens in my life, things people can relate to,” Mathis said. 

Mathis said his favorite video he made was a skit he made two years ago about how people come to school to see their crushes, but since COVID happened and online school became the reality for students across the globe, people couldn’t see their crushes at school. It was the first video he made that blew up. 

“When my video blew up I was laying in bed and people kept sending me [it]…I was excited because I could start making money off TikTok.”

Haywood and Mathis agreed that being popular on social media can be helpful for a career. 

“I want to be a YouTuber and streamer, and I think TikTok will help promote my videos,” Haywood said. “I want to stream games and post the funny clips on YouTube, and I would use TikTok to promote my content.” 

Mathis noted other careers that could benefit from being big on social media, such as those interested in performing arts or live theatre. 

“With acting, people can see how you act and get to know your personality and decide if you would be fit for a role they need,” Mathis said.

Mathis hopes that whatever he does in the future can bring a smile to people’s faces and make them happier because he says you never know what people are going through.

“In everything you do there is something positive you can get out of it and with TikTok and Instagram you can share things you relate to and people can gain something positive from it.”