This past week, Instagram-famous Essena O'Neill abruptly shut down all of her social media accounts to free herself from what she described as the detrimental effects of social media's promotion of self-validation through a number of likes or followers. Essena is a nineteen year old girl from Australia who became famous through her various social media platforms, with over 500,000 followers on Instagram. She was even making an income off of her Instagram posts. However, now she's deleted all of her social media accounts except for her Instagram, where she removed over 2,000 photos. She renamed her account to "Social Media Is Not Real Life", and the remaining photos were edited with captions that depicted truthful anecdotes about how many pictures were taken to get that one shot or how she wouldn't have eaten that day, and how the pressures of perfection affected her. She wanted to show how fake these photos were, that they did not portray her perfect life, and that we should never compare ourselves to what we see online, because those Snapchats or statuses never tell the real story. O'Neill states that her dedication to social media suffocated her and consumed her entire life. In a blog post describing why she made such a drastic change in her life she admits, "I spent 12-16 wishing I could receive validation from numbers on a screen. I spent the majority of my teenage years being self absorbed, trying desperately to please others and feel 'enough'. Spent 16-19 editing myself and life to be that beautiful, fitspo, positive, bright girl online.... I didn't find happiness in social approval, constantly edited and shooting my life. So I decided to quit."

Instead of allowing social media to dominate her life, O'Neill created a video blog, "Let's Be Game Changers," dedicated to promoting life outside of social media. After exposing her perfectly edited dream life, she now wishes to eliminate the social approval aspect of social media entirely. O'Neill then implores her readers to create a social network platform that is not based on validation through views or followers but rather on genuine value and quality. She challenges us to stop comparing ourselves to others, stop worrying about the numbers of likes and followers, and to stop allowing something that is often so fake to influence our lives.

I am not sharing this story because I believe all social media is evil or because I want everyone to delete their Facebook accounts today. However, I did find her message about evading self-validation from likes and followers incredibly important. The picture of the perfect couple on Facebook with 406 "likes" does fight. The two girls laughing hysterically in a photo on Instagram are not always best friends. The loving family in photographs posted online may argue constantly. Not everyone is as happy as they make themselves out to be on social media. We cannot compare ourselves to the perfect lives people choose to share on the internet. Today social media can be used as weapon: whose life is more perfect, who has more likes, and who do people like more? We cannot let these comparisons and deceptions of reality destroy our generation's confidence, relationships and lives.

Essena O'Neill took a bold stand against this toxic aspect of the social media apps we all use daily, exposing the harsh realities behind those seemingly flawless photos. Though the fundamental premise behind these social media platforms is positive and beneficial (I love sending daily snaps and playing with the new filters just as much as the next person), but unfortunately these platforms are creating a much more superficial version of ourselves, as we strive to showcase a "perfect life". Instead, we ought to be "game changers," as O'Neill suggests, and focus on valuing friends and family not followers, seeing the beauty in real life rather than in someone else's edited photos, and, most importantly, looking up from our telephones to appreciate the happiness and validation the world right around us can provide.