Essena O'Neill: Blog Post #4

After assessing Essena O’Neil’s actions prior to her departure from social media, it is evident that her recent actions are characteristics of what Van Dijck calls the “neoliberal economic principles” of the culture of connectivity of contemporary social media platforms. Essena openly spoke to the public about her experience in living the “dream” life. She thought she was at the pinnacle of success – at least what her then 12 year old self thought success was. However, it wasn’t until she was 19 did she realize that though she was girl that had it all, “having it all on social media means absolutely nothing to your real life”. Essena no longer was living her life for herself, but she was almost a slave to social media (Instagram). She made her life look perfect but in reality, she was anything but perfect … she was mentally destroyed. The idea of the false sense of perfect life got to her head as Van Dijk argues that “connectivity derives from a continuous pressure – both from peers and technologies”. She had this pressure to keep putting on this act that she had it all ... yet she was always looking for more. As she said, “the only thing that made me feel better about myself was the more followers, the more likes, the more praise and the more views I got. It was never enough”. This is in relation to the idea that Van Dijk brings up about the ideology of values and hierarchy. People live for validation from others. Platforms like Instagram are very narcissistic platform as you upload pictures about yourself, everything you post revolves around you … this connects to the neoliberal economic principle as it promotes rational self-interest. Essena felt as though she was letting numbers define her worth, she found it impure. While in the midst of gaining attention and being instagram “famous” Essena was so absorbed into this world without realizing the damage it was doing to her. Till after when she finally got a wake up call from this unrealistic perfect life she was supposedly living and decided to leave it all behind. Though ironically her departure from all this and speaking truthfully about her personal experience on social media came with a lot of backlash. People accused her of seeking for attention, money, and fame … yet, she had all this but she was giving it all away. Which is unfortunately to say that we live in a society where we constantly bring people down and we fetishize gadgets and social media because we are in constant struggle for power. We cannot control our fate so we look towards other things that we can control – we can control who we follow, what we post, and how we want to be perceived. However, all in all it is a false sense of power like Essena’s realization of her false sense of the "perfect" life.

Works Cited:

Essena O'Neill - Why I REALLY Am Quitting Social Media - (Original Video). Perf. Essena O'Neil. Why I REALLY Am Quitting Social Media - (Original Video). Youtube, 3 Nov. 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2016. 

Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.