19-Year-Old Karim Pina Grew Over 100k Followers on Twitter While Being In and Out of the Hospital

A lot of the focus these days, when it comes to social media, is on Instagram. Growth hacks and audience building strategies abound. However, other major social networks also make it possible to still reach influencer states and grow a massive audience. Twitter is one of those social media platforms, and is the one 19-year-old Karim Pina decided to focus his efforts on. It paid off because he now boasts of having broken the 100K follower barrier.

Karim's journey with Twitter began a long time ago, back when he was just 11 years old in 2010. When he first got on Twitter, it was just something fun he wanted to do and to stay connected with friends. He was not thinking about reaching a coveted milestone like 100,000 followers. Fast-forward to nine years later, and Karim has achieved an extraordinary feat.

The teen years have not been easy on Karim. In fact, he has had a much more challenging time than his peers. That's because when Karim turned 13, he was diagnosed with eosinophilic gastroenteritis, which is a rare digestive disease, and esophagitis, which is a condition that causes dangerous inflammation of the esophagus. As if that wasn't enough, he was later also diagnosed with a rare mitochondrial disorder led resulted in him having frequent seizures.

All of these together have made Karim's teenage years very challenging. He has had a rough life growing up, and was constantly in and out of hospitals ever since he was 10 years old. Now that he is 19, he reflects back at these hardships and sees the reason for his crowning achievement of gaining over 100K followers on Twitter being due to the hardships he suffered.

When Karim started having health problems at the age of 10, he looked for a social outlet that helped him stay connected with others, even when he wasn't able to physically see his friends. Social media platforms like Twitter were the perfect solution for his woes. He began fervently using them and seeing his follower count increasingly expand.

Today, Karim has hit a milestone that is not that easy to do on Twitter today, given the low reach the algorithm usually manages to provide users. However, Karim has a bit of seniority on Twitter, given that he's been on it for a decade now.

Karim has leveraged the social media skills he has developed over the years to become a teen social media influencer on Twitter. However, Karim is also seeing the monumental traction Instagram has gotten over the years, which is why he is expanding onto that platform now. While on his way to 10K followers on IG, he has still got some work cut out for him. Thankfully for him, he has plenty of time these days.

You can follow Karim on his Twitter page @voecs and also follow him on Instagram @baysidereem.