With over half a million Instagram followers, some 60,000 friends on Snapchat, and more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, Essena O’Neill was considered a teenage social media superstar. But last week, the 18-year-old Australian said goodbye to her massive following, shut down most of her social media platforms, and renamed her Instagram account: Social Media Is Not Real Life.
In a series of confessional videos up on her new website, “Let’s Be Game Changers,” a makeup-free and messy-haired O’Neill revealed the reason behind her social media cleanse. She explained that while she seemed to have “a dream life” on Instagram, in reality, she was miserable and growing tired of promoting a fictional and highly edited lifestyle.
On her last Instagram post, O’Neill wrote: “Without realizing, I’ve spent the majority of my teenage life being addicted to social media, social approval, social status, and my physical appearance. Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real. It’s contrived images and edited clips ranked against each other. It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation in views, success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated, self-absorbed judgment.”