As most of us know, Essena O'Neil, a rising star on many social media platforms, decided to deny thy father and refuse thy name. Okay not that dramatic, but she did pretty much forfeit her standing army of teens when she decided to bring a halt to her social media reign.
That being said, she not only deleted tons of media online, but she created a website dedicated to producing a 'real' version of herself and hoping to inspire others to do the same, stating "I created a celebrity construct of myself, largely built around aesthetics and edited highlights of my personal life...I just don't want my life or work to be like that again." I highly encourage you to check out her website letsbegamechangers.com for more information.
I've always had the incessant thought in the back of my mind that social media acts as a stage between the user and the viewer. Nothing can go up on a personal account without it going through the person who owns the account. Everything posted is posted by you to project a certain image about yourself. Some people exploit this to post material that isn't who they truly are, but how they want society to see them so that they can get more followers or likes on a post. I'm not saying you don't deserve to post a selfie if you're just feeling yourself one day, but when it becomes the norm to post only one aspect of your life in hopes that random strangers will decide to interact with you on the internet, something has gotten lost in the transition of what social media was created for and what it is today.
Bear with me, i'm about to drop some cultural wisdom on you.
Claude Monet, a famous impressionist painter, painted the same haystack 25 times to show the effects of light at different seasons and different times of the day. Obviously, there's some that were painted in the harsh bright light of midday and then there's some that were painted in the setting or rising sun with a cooler light. 
Monet didn't care wether people liked the blue undertones of the haystacks, he just painted and focused on his work.
Now lets say he did care. What if, out of the 25, he took out every single painting in which he used a dark blue. Then you would be left with a certain type of painting that really has no deviation within the series. Its all just bright colors and day light.
That is precisely how social media is being used. People are taking out all of the negative things, the dark blue paints, and only giving the world the bright yellows and oranges.
That's not the problem. The problem is that we are multi-faceted people and others only get the chance to look at the one side we show online. This facade that we make is then out for the world to see and anyone can look at it. Any one can compare their life that is full of 'problems' and compare it to this girl who post selfies looking flawless all the time. Because online, hardly any of us are three dimensional. We use the best parts of our lives to convince people that we are who we are not. We use the best parts of our lives to get likes on our photos and status updates.
And that's what our generation has come to. Falsifying an image to gain immediate gratification or self satisfaction. You don't need people who you haven't spoken to in years to like a photo of yourself to feel good, but society has drilled in us that the amount of interaction on social media determines our worth.
You can say its not true, but if Twitter and Instagram and Facebook had no like or share or follow features, how many of us would actually still be using them? Some thing tells me it would be a lot less than there are currently.
It's unrealistic of me to believe that anyone will go and erase their social media after reading this, and i actually don't want you to. I want you to look at social media in a new light and understand that you don't have to put on a show on the internet to get people to like you. You need to show the world that you too are a real person.
No more getting jealous over your friend that got more likes on her selfie than you. No more erasing your post because 'it only got three retweets'.
Queue the classic Hannah Montana song, because nobody is perfect and you've got to work it. Show the world your use of dark paint along side the orange. Let them see your passions and your feelings.
At the end of the day, we all know we're people. I'm a person, Julia Roberts is a person, Grace Helbig is a person, Connor Franta is a person. You are a person. As a generation we need to understand that we are all people and we can stop this idolization of social media mongols by understanding that life continues to move forward after the camera shuts off.
We are not a collection of still frames suspended in time waiting until the next post goes up. We are living, breathing, thinking people who are more than the culmination of feedback from an online platform.
