Essena O’Neill went viral earlier this month after she declared war on social media. Calling it “fake” and claiming social media is leading to a “brainwashed generation,” she vowed to quit social media for good. She deleted both her Instagram and her YouTube accounts, which had over 500,000 and 300,000 followers, respectively.
Interestingly, though, she continues to post videos and make commentary on her “friends’” social media posts. When two of her friends went on their own YouTube account and called her first emotional video out for being “completely fake,” Essena retaliated by posting another video about their lack of knowledge and authenticity. So, it seems, she declared war on social media…and is now fighting through social media.
It could be that Essena believes her ideas and is sticking to her convictions, but she is only representing a very small minority of people who are attention-hungry, looking for as many likes and followers as possible. Those people, who make social media their lives, are bound to be miserable and lose touch with reality, as she claims she did. However, she is going way overboard with her convictions – not everyone is affected by their social media pages like she’s claiming. If you’re a level-headed, grounded human being, you can use social media to share big events in your life with people you know and love.
That being said, I understand we all feel the need to get more “likes” and followers, but the fact is we don’t have time to shape and mold our entire lives around our social media persona. Essena O’Neill admitted to making her social media profiles her entire life – and that’s what contributed to her downfall. Other social media personalities agree, and many have tweeted about her reaction to social media:
There really has been a binary reaction to her emotional video – CNN and DailyMail feel pity, and their articles feature titles like “Instagram Star Essena O’Neill Exposes the Truth About Social Media.” Others are more critical, with headlines such as, “Model Using Social Media to Tell You Social Media is Evil.”
Now floundering for support beneath a deluge of criticisms and accusations of hypocrisy, Essena recently told the world that “social media couples” aren’t real – they exist to generate more likes for the two celebrities. Sure, there are people who pursue relationships for aesthetic purposes (she claims a male model approached her and said they could take the internet by storm if they dated), but again, she is trying to represent a very small amount of people and not looking at the world as a whole. She’s still blinded by her time spent living as her profiles, and she can’t see that she’s still not seeing reality. And the reality is, if she’s giving up social media for herself, that’s great, but she’s now trying to project her problems onto every personality online.
She created a new Tumblr page (how ironic) to voice her opinions: letsbegamechangers.com. You can follow her crusade to end social media there, or you can live your life like a normal college student, share happy moments online, go get Chipotle, and not allow social media and how people perceive you online to rule your life.
Photo Sources:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/04/23/2E09A58300000578-3304346-image-a-7_1446678202160.jpg
http://www.attn.com/stories/4084/essena-oneill-backlash-quitting-social-media