Essena O’Neill had half a million Instagram followers and YouTube paid her university fees.
However, the 18-year-old Australian has now waged a fully fledged war against social media, and has deleted her Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat alongside some 2,000 photos.
Essena upholds that her obsession with social media created “insecurity” and a need for “validation” and has even set up a website to shatter the illusion of social media.
In a recent video, she confessed: ‘As a 12-year-old girl, I felt hella insecure about my Instagram…. Because I had no likes and followers, I thought I meant nothing.’
However, by the time she was 16, she was earning $2,000 a month through YouTube’s Adsense feature, which paid her rent and her university fees.
She went on: “Yeah 16 year old Essena would have been like ‘wtf girl you have the dream life!!!!’ So why did I feel so lost, lonely and miserable?
“Well, I wasn’t actioning my values. I wasn’t being myself, because I didn’t know how to. I lost myself to the fear of not being enough, not having enough and not being what other’s wanted. That’s all changing now.”
She has now deleted 2,000 photos, renamed her account to “Social Media Is Not Real Life,” and changed the captions on existing photos with harsh truths – detailing posts she was paid for, how many takes each picture might take and the pressures she felt to look perfect.
On her last Instagram post, she writes: “I’ve spent the majority of my teenage life being addicted to social media, social approval, social status, and my physical appearance.
“[Social media] is 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 judgement.”
Smart girl.
