Social Media

Lately Ive been thinking a lot about society's addiction to social media and then I came across a story that really opened my eyes. Essena O'Neil, an instagram famous Austrialian model spoke out to the world about her new, refined views on social media. Over the past week Essena changed over 2,000 of her instagram captions to things like "stomach sucked in, strategic pose-nothing about this is candid" or "I didn't eat all day in order to attend this shoot". Essena is speaking out to let everyone, young girls and women in particular, know that not many things in the media are actual representations of reality. Of course, we all know this in the back of our minds, but for some reason, many people still admire these models and envy the lives they portray through social media and instagram. Finally, Essena gave the world the real truth about social media and the lengths at which people will go just to make it look like they live a 'perfect' life.

This story was actually very interesting to me. I'm not going to lie, I've looked at pictures of 'insta-famous' models and have wished to some degree or another that I had the lifestyle they did, and I think most girls our age can agree that they have done the same. However, since reading about Essena's effort to stop the unrealistic portrayal of life through social media, I've realized that this lifestyle that so many people want to obtain, just simply does not exist. Essena stated that she was completely consumed by being insta-famous. She would constantly be focused on checking her instagram to see the amount of likes her pictures were acquiring. She was obsessed with taking the 'perfect picture'. She would pay people to take excessive amounts pictures of her to make it seem as if  she was living life in the moment and just happened to catch the perfect picture-when in reality she spent long hours at photo shoots and many days not eating to maintain what society portrays as the perfect body.

This story just really opened up my eyes and in a way changed my views on social media completely. You could be having the worst day ever, and post a picture of you staged at the beach and give off the portrayal that your life is absolutely amazing. I've realized that I would much rather call up a friend, let them know I'm having a bad day and vent, rather than post a picture and hope that the amount of likes I get will make me feel better about my self, or my day..whatever it may be. I hope this article changed your view as well, because we deserve to be actually living life and not worrying about what other people views upon ourselves are. As Essena implied, go out and enjoy life through the real world; there are so many beautiful things to see, and so many great things to do, stop hiding behind a computer, or phone screen and LIVE LIFE.