Social media has developed into an almost essential part of any young adult’s life. We are always updating our Instagram feeds and seeing what everyone is doing on Snapchat. Many people find themselves in the limelight due to their physical features or their passions.One Australian teenager found herself in this exact position.

Essena O’Neill is followed by thousands of people on YouTube and just over a million on Instagram. Her beauty and her stance on veganism has people across the globe wanting to know her every move.She travels the world to speak about her life choices and people listen. She recently gave it all up, completely deleting her Tumblr and many pictures and video on other social media. Essena has come to the conclusion that social media is a lie.

She’s not completely wrong either. Social media is where people put their best faces forward. But what’s wrong_­ with that? We all know that no one is perfect. It’s something we’ve been taught since childhood, yet we seem to forget this the moment we see someone with a “better” life than our own.

Take a look at your Instagram feed. What do you see? My guess is you’re looking at beautiful people going to beautiful places with their beautiful friends. While this might be a true representation of their life at that moment, it’s not their life 24/7. Those #instafamous people you idolize have bad days too.

For Essena the money and adoration wasn’t what she wanted or needed. In order to practice what she preached, she needed to show her raw, authentic self. She didn’t feel that she could do that through social media, so she removed it from her life. Anything she didn't remove, she captioned with what was actually going through her head when she posted it. She chose, what seems to others, the extreme route to do away with the negativity in her life. While extreme, Essena’s decision is making people think about how they let social media affect their lives. Why not try and better yourself instead of wishing you were someone else?