Essena O’neill Wasn’t Really Sucked Into The Social Media Vortex

“Social media is not real life.”

I understand what Essena O’Neill means when she says this, and to an extent, I agree. In a world where virtual interaction is commonplace, ‘likes’ and ‘favourites’ are just as normal as winks and handshakes. Not only that, but to a lot of people, they are a source of validation.
Essena confesses herself that this very validation is something she sought after for years. At the age of fifteen all she wanted, in her own words, was to be ‘Facebook famous.’ And after doing some modelling and flaunting her toned body, she achieved just that.

Recently, however, Essena announced that she has ‘quit’ social media; she essentially gave up on Instagram and removed herself from Snapchat, Tumblr and YouTube. Granted, she has not completely disappeared from the internet because she launched a website called Lets Be Game Changers. This website represents a huge change in Essena’s beliefs; she no longer holds any stock in superficial concepts such as beauty, and instead wants to promote ideas of wellbeing, creativity and valuing others for their personality over their physical assets. The aim of her website is actually very broad, but at the core of it is a longing to alert other young girls to the darker side of modelling and online fame, so they don’t fall into the same trap.

Essena has used her new website to expose the rather deceptive nature of her modelling experiences, and attributed the blame to perceived beauty standards and the ‘fake’ nature of social media. It is undeniably true that there are certain ‘societal standards’ as to how a model should look, and not only is this disturbing, but it’s exploitative and unnecessary. Unfortunately, Essena was ultimately sucked in by it.

It turns out that a lot of her photo shoots came with specific instructions for how she should look and what she should do, from the way she sucked in her stomach down to the time she uploaded a particular photo. The reality is that these seemingly perfect images took dozens of attempts to capture in most cases. The poses Essena adopted were not ‘natural’ to her, yet they were purposely manufactured to appear so to her audience. On top of this she was often paid for wearing certain clothes, and in this sense she was used as an advertising tool.

The case of Essena’s online fame is that of a young, beautiful and impressionable young woman disregarding what she loved –hobbies like art and writing– in favour of what she had initially perceived as the ‘good life.’ After experiencing it she now believes that fame on social media isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and she has shed an awful lot of light on her own experiences to prove this.

The idea behind Essena’s website is lovely, but I can’t shake the feeling that it is just another way for her to seek validation from others. Sadly, the fact that she is asking for donations to help her pay rent is just proof to me that she’s not entirely sure what to do with herself now that she has changed her lifestyle. Having said that, she is very young, and should really be capable of picking herself up. Miss O’Neill is right to condemn the darker side of modelling and social media, but in all honesty it is hardly a revelation, and she certainly won’t be the last person affected by it.

So I agree with you, Essena: social media is ‘fake.’ But it is also very, very real.