Essena O’Neil, a white, 19-year old female model from Australia was a wildly popular figure on social media. She garnered over half a million followers on Instagram, two hundred thousand followers on Tumblr and YouTube, and sixty thousand followers on Snapchat. Last year, she took her followers by surprise when she deleted three of her four accounts and renamed her remaining Instagram account “Social Media is Not Real Life.”
According to Seventeen Magazine, O’Neil deleted 2,000 pictures and “changed the captions on existing photos with truthful anecdotes about posts she was paid for, how many tries it took to get the shot, and the pressures she felt to look perfect.”
In the article, O’Neil claimed that she spent most of her time as a teen addicted to social media, minding what others thought about her, and caring about her physical appearance to an unhealthy extent. She would post a wide range of selfies, bikini shots, and fitspiration pictures on her Instagram account and quickly became a very prominent figure on the social site. She was celebrated by hundreds of thousands of people for her delicate facial features and thin body.
However, now, after deactivating most of her social media accounts, the young adult admitted to tanning, restricting her calories, skipping meals, and spending hours practicing her poses to achieve those perfect pictures.
“Social media is contrived images and edited clips ranked against each other,” she was quoted in the article. “It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation, in views, success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated self-absorbed judgment.”
After leaving social media, O’Neil created a Vimeo account and to make videos that enlighten others on health and positivity and says that she feels more liberated than ever before.
“I can’t tell you how free I feel without social media,” O’Neil told Seventeen Magazine. “Never again will I let a number define me. It SUFFOCATED me.”
The young model’s decision to deactivate her accounts poses two very important questions: Is social media detrimental to our mental health? And should we follow Essena’s lead and remove ourselves from the web?
“No,” said CC first-year Alex Rivas. “As a cis, white, upper-class female, it’s easy for her to say we should leave social media. Social media can bring awareness to important social issues.”
“It can be helpful for long distance communication,” claims another student. “I think that social media is an issue only if you think it’s an accurate representation of other peoples’ lives.”
Niyat Ogbazghi
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