I'm sure that many of you reading this have at least heard about the recent controversy surrounding social media. It all began with a "famous" Australian social media user by the name of Essena O'Neill. She first took to her Instagram account and told the bare truth of the girl behind the camera. However, what really caught the attention of the world was a particular YouTube video in which she literally brought herself to tears while discussing her career.

I will leave it up to you all to watch, or not watch, the 18-minute-long video in which she goes into greater detail about why she is "quitting social media" (which she actually did shortly thereafter). However, as most people are doing, I would like to share my personal opinion about the issue at hand. That issue is that certain people take social media way too seriously.

Today when taking a picture with a simple iPhone, there are many factors that come into play. You have to make sure it fits your Instagram theme. You have to face the sun for optimal lighting. There has to be some sort of aesthetically pleasing aspect of the photo. Bonus points if your winged eyeliner is on fleek. And if all else fails, thank God for editing apps. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I don't think about a lot of these things before posting a picture, but there is a line that has to be drawn.

What people need to understand is that what you see on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook feeds are all things that your followers want you to see. From one simple glance at someone's profile picture you can't tell if they are depressed or happy, rich or poor. However, you can make your own assumptions depending on what they choose to display in the picture.

The people who make their lives seem the most interesting generate the most followers and can quite easily make a career out of it. According to Yahoo Tech, famous Instagram users can get paid hundreds of dollars to post just one picture featuring a product. This means that all of the photos that they post are controlled by a company that dictate how a person poses or if their face can even be in the picture.

So why do we care? Most of the people who are reading this are just normal people like myself who have way less than one thousand followers on Instagram. What does this have to do with us? The answer is that it has everything to do with us. Every time we go to the "Explore" tab, we are immediately shown the most popular photos on the Internet at any given time. We click on the first picture and then we end up spending 30 minutes creeping on a random social media star.

The problem doesn't arise until we start to compare our lives to the paid people in those pictures. We begin to think our lives aren't as great or start to wonder what we can do to have as much fun as the users in the "Explore" tab. What we don't do is wonder who the people in the pictures really are and what goes on before and after the photo is taken. We start to look at people as objects instead of human beings.

I think it is crucial that everyone take social media celebrities with a grain of salt. Remember that these people are being paid to look perfect. Outside of their profiles, they have entire lives that consist of the same routines that most of us go through each day...the bad days just don't make the cut. Who wants to see a picture of a tear-stained face? No one. Companies know that and profit off of it. Instead of trying to be like the people who get paid to post pictures of the best days of their lives, try to be like yourself. That, my friends, is priceless.