Essena O'Neill, a famous model in Australia and a social media celebrity, released a video on YouTube saying that she is going to quit social media. She has been using social media for the past three years, making herself a successful living. She was at the pinnacle of success: with over 574,000 followers on Instagram, around 250,000 subscribers on YouTube, and close to 60,000 dedicated Snapchat contacts. In her video she says, “I am quitting social media to tell everyone that I was miserable. I had it all, and I was miserable.”
In the video, she describes how her social media success has made her feel "empty," "depressed," and "anxious." When she was younger, she correlated the number of views she had received with the feelings of “value and happiness.” She wanted to be one of the girls in the magazines, and had become obsessed with making herself in their image. For the past few years, her self-worth would be determined by how many likes, followers, views, and comments she was receiving on social media. In the video, O'Neill says that this was the “only time I felt better about myself.” Now, she recognizes that defining oneself by the numbers of followers or likes is not real love, and not real worth.
Since posting this video, she has deleted about 2,000 photos from her online profiles and has re-captioned her other photos "to expose the harsh and often humorous reality behind the Insta-famous cultures.” She goes on to describe how much makeup she was wearing in a single photo, how long it took to get the photo, and how many different photos were taken to find one the one that was Instagram-worthy and would gain the most attention. O'Neill says, “Everything I did in a day was to become that ‘perfect person' online.” She had built herself a new image online and an empire around it. Yet, she found the strength to recognize that what she was doing was not healthy.
In society today, many people end up putting their self-worth into numbers on social media. However, social media is not all negative. Yes, there are many negative aspects about social media, but there are a lot of positive ones as well. People use social media to share and receive important information: whetherthis has something to do with one’s family and friends, or if it has to do with learning something new. Social media is a platform to spread what one believes, thinks, and questions about a variety of subjects. It is a tool to begin a more connected future; whether that be staying in touch with long distance friends, or making new friends from across the world. Social media helps people become more knowledgeable about the world around them.
