Serious Problems Beautifully Hidden

All social media users strive to have the most liked photo, the most popular Instagram page or the most comments on a post. Overtime this can become obsessive and can eventually take over a portion of your everyday life. For some people they do it as a hobby, for others they do it as a career and for the larger amount of the masses they do it to become popular and to be well liked among a group of people. We live in a society today where everything you do, buy, and eat must be documented on a social media platform. Everyone who has a social media account knows that initially it is difficult to get a large following of people and have content that is engaging to your viewers that may not be your best friend. In order to do this it takes a lot of time, effort and money to make sure that what you are posting is going to get the most likes and is going to receive the amount of publicity that you want it to. 

Van Dijck talks about how there is continuous pressure from your audience when you are connected through social media applications like Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Viewers constantly want to see new and engaging content, which can be a lot of work for the person that has possession of the social media account. This is very similar to what happened with Essena O'neil, the amount of pressure that she received from her viewers and her fans was emense and would require her to put the amount of effort into her Instagram account that she would into a full time job. Sometimes trying to get viewers interested means making certain things and people look different then they do in reality. This helps in creating a strategic alliance against other Instagram accounts that may have the same type of following. Everyone wants to win the popularity contest even if that means using applications to make yourself look skinner, more tanned, flawless, etc. This can start to take over your real life and can impact the user in multiple ways. 

This is exactly what happened to Essena O'neil and I cannot blame her for not wanting to be apart of the social media realm anymore. Audiences were shaping the way that Essena was perceived based on what content they like and comment on. This then changed Essena as a person and she starting doubting what she was posting because it was not who she truly was, she was acting like a person that the masses wanted her to act as. 

Do you blame Essena for leaving the social media world? Was her profile even a depiction of what her actual life looked like on a regular basis? 

The answer that I have for this question is no, I don't blame Essena for leaving this fake and made up life of hers in the social media realm. If I was in the same position as her I would be just as inclined to ghost from the world that is setting unrealistic expectations to young girls and young boys around the world. Not only was Essena's profile a made up reality, but it was a way for companies to sell their products through the commodification of the people and the products that were being sold. Who doesn't love a free product that was sent to you? Who wouldn't want to post it on their Instagram and get more followers or more likes? No one would say no to this opportunity, but is there a point where this gets to be too much? YES. If you want to be the "Winner" you must receive the most likes, shares, comments and follows and with this, you have in fact "Won". But this doesn't mean that what translates in the social media world is the same in the real world. In a sense the user of social media accounts must sell themselves as a commodity in order to get the viewership that is ideal in this day and age. 

Sources: 

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