Before last year I had never heard of who Essena O’Neill was. I might have seen a glamours picture of her in a pretty dress or on the beach on my main Instagram feed (at the time this feed was the feed that displayed popular and highly liked photos...versus how it is set up now) but I never knew who she was or followed her 'Instagram Famous' account.
The first time I had really noticed Essena O’Neill was when she released her video confessional about social media. Her face kept popping up all over my Facebook newsfeed as her video was going viral across the Internet.
Just by one confessional video Essena transitioned her followers from wanting to be her and look just like her to actually feeling inspired by her. When I first saw pictures of her photos with the edited captions last year, I was very surprised at was I was reading. Although I didn't really know of her before, I wondered how this girl could possibly be saying such low thoughts about herself by calling her pictures fake etc.
Then as I kept reading through articles and watched her confessional video I realized what she was exactly trying to do and thought that finally someone with a large social media following is calling out the fakeness of social media and how we try to make our lives look 'picture perfect'.
Jose Van Dijk says "Connectivity derives from a continuous pressure—both from peers and technologies--to expand through competition and gain power through strategic alliances" (21), this matches up with exactly what Essena has expressed about social media. That we feel the pressure through peers (friends and followers etc.) and social media itself, to make everything look great for the validation of social acceptance and attention, as well as simply gaining more followers and likes.
What Van Dijk explains as 'culture of connectivity' is exactly what Essena used to do through her personal social media accounts. It is very unhealthy, yet sadly it is a huge role in society nowadays with human connection being surrounded and developed by social media. There are not only physical screens between us all but also invisible walls that we all hide behind….only showing what we want people to see/think of us for the sake of vanity and power.
I think it is great how Essena stepped up and exposed herself like that. It caught the attention of many people that hopefully impacted them all in a great way to change how we use social media and not focusing on fake portrayals of ourselves. Personally I have even fallen for the perfect social media trap where I have posed multiple times for 'the perfect photo'. I hope that everyone learns how consuming and unhealthy social media can really be.
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