Essena O'Neill, an Australian teenager with over half a million follower on Instagram recently decided to quit all her social media accounts. She described social media as “contrived perfection made to get attention," and asked her followers and listeners to also quit social media for similar reasons. Essena made a new website called Let's Be Game Changers to raise awareness about how fake social media is.
A few days ago, Essena posted a video onto her Youtube page to explain very honestly how she felt about everything that was going on in her life. You can watch the video below:
Several brands and companies pay people to wear or share their products with their followers on social media. Like many famous social media personalities, Essena was able to make an income from just posting a picture of clothes from a company. However she admits that she spent hours and hours trying to look beautiful and presentable to her audience. Her life revolved around getting more likes and trying to look beautiful and being recognized.
However, since she realized how absurd her goals in life were, she has made a dramatic rejection of social media celebrity. She gained another 400k followers on Instagram after announcing this major life change before she deleted her account completely.
She had initially deleted over 2,000 pictures she says, “served no real purpose other than self-promotion." The captions of the pictures she kept were dramatically edited to reveal the manipulation, mundanity, and even insecurity behind them. For example, a photo of her wearing a bikini was once captioned: “Things are getting pretty wild at my house. Maths B and English in the sun,” it was then changed to “see how relatable my captions were – stomach sucked in, strategic pose, pushed up boobs. I just want younger girls to know this isn’t candid life, or cool or inspirational. It’s contrived perfection made to get attention."
Her dramatic change has seriously affected the thoughts and motives of several other social media celebrities. You can support her cause by subscribing to her website and donating. Her website ranges from interviews, Ted Talks, Art, Quotes, Books, Music, and much more.
Her story made me realize how much we are controlled by social media and technology. I recently wrote an article on FOMO and have been doing research on how much social media is affecting our lives, and recently, social media's negative sides have started to seem heavier on the scale than the positive sides. Far too many people have become depressed and have a low self-esteem simply because of social media. Maybe Essena is correct in her strong beliefs. Maybe we all need to start becoming game changers.
