For many people 18-year-old model and internet star Essena O’Neill may have been living the dream, making money from sharing her photos online and posing in some of the most beautiful places in the world in front of her 800,000 followers, yet she still wasn’t happy. Last week the Australian deleted more than 2,000 photos from her Instagram account and changed her name to “Social Media Is Not Real Life.” She has even gone as far as editing many of her captions to reveal the ‘truth’ behind each of them, shedding light on how so many are staged and what brand or product she is plugging.
“Without realising, I’ve spent the majority of my teenage life being addicted to social media, social approval, social status and my physical appearance,” O’Neill writes in one of her Instagram posts.
Essena O’Neill is an Australian model who’s decided to speak up on how fake Instagram models and their ‘prefect photos’ can be.
Although she had spent years building her social media profiles to a point where she could make thousands of dollars a month she had become consumed by it.
She would spend more than 50+ hours a week trying to shape and manipulate her online persona – “I was miserable. Stuck. Uninspired. Angry.”
O’Neill decided to delete more than 2,000 of her photos and edit the captions of the remaining few to reveal the truth behind each one.
She’s since decided to quit. Watch below to see why.
