Social media has become a part of our daily lives and has led to arguments over how genuine these sites are, or if social media has consumed our lives in a negative way.
Recently, Essena O’Neill, Instagram star, created a video about quitting social media for her 12-year-old self. She explains that her 12-year-old self dreamed of being this important person with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media because then she would be happy like the models in the pictures. She reached this goal she created as a 12-year-old and realized this didn’t make her happy. As an 18-year-old, she has come to the conclusion that the number of followers and likes she received would never satisfy her.
She later created a video called, “Why I Think Social Media Sucks.” This video explains how businesses use social media celebrities in order to advertise their products. She explains that she doesn’t think paid advertisements are okay in one of her blog posts. She accepted the money that businesses paid her because she was in need of money but afterward felt bad for doing this for so long. She rants about the fact that businesses told her exactly how to place the product in her picture and what to say in the caption of the picture or in the video.
O’Neill now has a website where she posts videos and blog post about her story with social media. She is also accepting donations from people who like her content instead of using advertisements.
While I respect O’Neill’s decision over quitting social media and understand the pain it must have caused her, I, personally, have found an immense amount of hope through social media.
When I was younger, I tended to be quite lonely. I never really had anyone my age to talk to about my struggles or the things I was sad about. Once I received my first laptop, I began reading blogs and watching YouTube videos of people around my age. It was the first time I realized that I was not alone in my struggles and that there was a community out there that was willing to talk about their experiences.
In all these videos and blog posts, I was encouraged to find myself beautiful, worthy and fearless. These art pieces strategically created on social media sites encouraged me to love myself.
It’s important to know that it didn’t take one blog post for me to begin to love myself. It took years of reading and watching posts from others about their life story and how they became fearless, so I needed a wide variety of content from people to notice that I wasn’t alone in my struggles. Since I knew so many other people struggled with a lot of the same things as me, I began to be courageous enough to open up to my friends.
Through my long hours of binge watching YouTube videos and reading blog posts, I began to notice the advertisements. These ads have never bothered me because I understood that these people were creating content that took time and effort and they deserved to make money from it.
I also understood that advertisements have been around longer than social media has. Businesses have endorsed celebrities to advertise their products on commercials and magazines for dozens of years. Since most of us use social media more than we watch television and read magazines, businesses have become smart with their advertisement strategy and have used prominent social media figures to endorse their products.
However, as the audience, we have the ability to buy the product or keep following the person endorsing the product. If we don’t like it, we can just unfollow them. It should be allowed and accepted that people choose to allow advertisements on their profile because they are spending a lot of time creating content for their audience and deserve to be supported financially.
Since social media is universal and portrays every type of person, I’ve learned many stories and have become accepting of every type of person. I understand that social media does have negative and positive effects.
I’ve seen people like O’Neill who are so consumed with social media that they create their self-image around their following. I stand by their decision to not be on social media because we should never put ourselves in situations where our worth is damaged by the amount of likes we have on a picture. Our beauty should not be found in how great we can edit our pictures. These people who have been damaged by social media should take action in what they allow their eyes to look at. They should decide to love themselves outside of the social media world. We should always be building ourselves up and loving ourselves.
However, I am a person who has found so much pure beauty in social media. I have had the pleasure of creating content on social media sites that have been vulnerable and honest. I find so much happiness in creating content that someone relates to. When I receive a message from someone who was touched by my hard work from my craft, it’s one of the most empowering feelings.
The thing is, I’ve created something good out of social media. I’ve created this world that I can be honest with people about my worst days and my best days. I’m able to make people feel less alone, and in that, I make myself feel less alone as well.
Social media has helped me express myself and has also begun to teach me how to love myself.
I stand by social media because it’s not a social media problem. It’s the heart behind the people using social media.
Social media should not be used as our life and what our worth is defined through. Social media should be used as a tool to exemplify our craft or show the world little snippets of our life. Social media should be a place that brings us joy, and if it doesn’t, you do not have to be on these sites. It’s your choice.
