My anxiety spikes when I go out in public and people's phones are pointed in my direction. I try to tell myself they might be playing Pokemon Go or some other augmented reality game, but I can't let go of a nagging fear that people are taking my picture to mock me. 

I have this view of people in their late teens/early 20s as being incredibly mean and having tons of friends and active group chats that they're constantly sending rude homemade memes about strangers to? How realistic is that? I often hear "no one cares about the weird thing you're doing, they only care about themselves" but how realistic is THAT, even? 

A lot of the younger people I know do similar things to what I'm imagining, for example using a filter to make a picture of their friend look ugly and then sending it to everyone they know and laughing about it, but maybe not as much about strangers?

I'm avoiding public more and more because I occasionally can have full panic attacks and one of my biggest fears is ending up on publicfreakout. It would help to know how common the culture of recording people for shits and giggles is and how much of it is my imagination.