It's perfectly normal to want to be accepted by people, but I think it should be mutual. Share somethings about yourself, the other person (people) do the same thing, etc, attention whoring is mostly a one way effort for a person to expose things about themselves without listening to others. The main example is (unfortunately) the old "here's a billion pictures of my body, please bathe me in compliments, ps I don't give a shit about knowing things about you".
As far as self esteem issues that's an internal thing, that cannot be mended by an influx of attention. Yes, sincere compliments and such can help but of you don't accept them then it doesn't help at all.