Essena O'Neill renounced her insta-fame earlier this week and if you're anything like me you didn't even know she was famous until she took it all back. So here's some background: O'Neill is a 19 year old blogger and YouTuber from Australia who has amassed over half a million followers on Instagram and around 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. On Monday, she posted a video entitled "Why I Think Social Media Sucks," deleted thousands of Instagram posts and edited all of her captions to explain the reality of the photos. A common theme in many of her captions was that she was unhappy and creating a false image of herself just to keep up appearances. She has also launched a website called letsbegamechangers.com where she will continue her war on social media. Although, using social media to diminish social media is slightly ironic, O'Neill is making a good point that I think we all, especially young women, should be standing behind.
Social media has become one of the most prominent forms of communication in the 21st century and there's no denying it has broken so many boundaries for us. News, messages, pictures - you name it, it's all instantaneous and that's great, but it also means we are being flooded by media at all times. The rise of social media has created a new job market - the Instagram model. These are people who actually get paid to take cute pictures of themselves while slyly promoting clothes, tea (who knew there were so many different brands of tea?) and more. O'Neill claimed to have been paid $200 to wear a shirt in an Instagram picture and that was way before she had her half a million followers. The business is lucrative, but it's becoming destructive.
While many critics have pointed out that social media is what you make it, it's hard to ignore the images of so-called perfection that are put in front of us day in and day out. It's even harder to ignore it when you're getting paid to create that image. Check your popular page at any time of day and there's bound to be at least 10 different fitness accounts with pictures boasting flawless, toned abs, the perfect legs and of course, the perfect boobs. If it's not a fitness account, it's a "college hot babes," account boasting pictures of gorgeous girls with perfect bodies who are exactly the same age as you yet look completely and totally different. It begs the question: is that how we're supposed to look?
The pressure to be perfect has always been part of our society, but social media has multiplied it ten-fold. We have become obsessed with our online personas, counting followers and likes. Comparing those numbers to others, comparing ourselves as a whole to others. It's not healthy and it's not helping the impressionable youth of America. In the wake of Essena O'Neill's rampage, Cosmopolitan.com asked a handful of young women if they agree that social media has effected their lives and self esteem.
These are just some of the most powerful quotes pulled from the interview. Essena O'Neill is not an isolated case. Young women and young girls across the globe feel this pressure to be perfect based on the 'perfect' Instagram models that exist now. These standards that they are setting come off as the norm, but in reality they aren't. These people who dedicate their lives to Instagram are well versed in how to make an image look perfect, how to make their bodies look just right, and how to capture the right lighting. And that's not to take away from the beauty and effort they put into attaining their looks and promotions, but they definitely put a lot more effort into making the perfect picture than creating a real life and that's what the average person doesn't see.
O'Neill has been receiving a lot of flack for posting this tirade on a platform she's declaring war on, but she's declaring war for a good reason. It's not healthy for anyone to validate themselves based on these numbers that essentially mean nothing. You have 2,000 followers? Great, but how many of them do you even know? You got 455 likes on your selife? Awesome, but what does that really mean? It's time to stop letting these numbers define us and control us. Social media is not real life and it's holding us back from living in reality.
