This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Cincinnati chapter.

You might have heard of Essena O’Neill, an Australian 19-year-old who, up until recently, had gained a huge internet following–most notably on Instagram. The reason she’s been in the news in these past weeks is because of a few edits she made to her photos. We don’t mean filters, either. Her old accounts aren’t up anymore, but before deleting everything she kept a few select pictures posted. Many had new captions similar to this one:

“Was paid $400 to post a dress. That’s when I had maybe 150k followers, with a half a million followers, I know of many online brands (with big budgets) that pay up to $2000 per post. Nothing is wrong with accepting brand deals. I just think it should be known. This photo had no substance, it was not of ethical manufacturing (I was uneducated at that time). SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT REAL in my point. Be aware of what people promote, ask yourself, what’s their intention behind the photo?”

She later posted a lengthy YouTube video–also now deleted–about why she decided to quit social media. For Essena, the stress and addictiveness associated with creating a fabricated image of herself ended up being too much to handle. But what about the rest of us?

Okay, so most of us aren’t Instagram famous. But even if our pictures aren’t getting 25 thousand likes, there’s still a certain element of our posts that existed in Essena’s. Just as she did, we choose what we post, plain and simple. Whenever we write a tweet or upload a picture, we are giving our followers nothing more and nothing less than exactly what we want them to see. But there’s still a little more to it than that. Despite getting to “filter” what the world sees of us, we’re still getting the chance to let the world see us, and that’s a really incredible thing. We all post things we end up deleting–R.I.P. to all those selfies of 13-year-old us–but everything we post we post for a reason. As a collective, our Instagrams are equal parts selfies, friends, pictures of art, new recipes, and nature. The majority of our posts probably aren’t 100% candid, but that doesn’t mean that these photos aren’t as valid of a representation of our lives as the ones that are.

If we were just focusing on aesthetics, it would be true to say that some pictures are better than others. But just as there is no one way we’re meant to live our lives, there is also no “correct” way to document them. The pictures we take when we look really good as just as important as those we take when we see something beautiful and inspiring. Sometimes these things cross over when we’re inspired by how beautiful we look, which is awesome too.

There seems to be a perceived disconnect between just photographing a moment and actually living in it, but who’s to say we can’t do both? Our lives as just as worth remembering as they are worth living. Posting isn’t a crime, and social media is a wonderful way to document and share our lives. In many ways, our accounts act just like a journal or a scrapbook would.

Essena O’Neill has recently started talking more about why she thinks social media sucks, but it doesn’t have to. What she has to say about her experience is definitely worth listening to, and despite her special circumstances, it’s still easy for us to relate and understand what she’s discussing. As we learned from Essena, it can pay–literally–to fake it. Now, she’s making the move to live as authentically as possible. But don’t worry, as far as we’re concerned, being genuine doesn’t have to mean deleting our Instagrams.

Social Media Doesn’t Have to Suck

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