Children ages eight to eighteen obtain an overwhelming 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption each day. (Miss Representation | The Representation Project.) Media is the predominant source of information for kids and its content has an outstanding impact on society. The media’s control is now limitless, and the lives of children are being drastically altered. Girls, in particular, learn at a young age that superficiality is key. They are taught that their bodies are far superior to their minds, which gives them a distorted idea of life, men and sexuality. Women’s achievements are now inadequate because their value is completely dependent on their external appearances. The media sells the notion that women’s worth is based solely on beauty, youth, and sexuality, and is not contingent on their minds.
Essena O’Neill, 18, a young woman famous on social media, stands up and speaks about how “Social Media Is Not Real Life”. Essena made money through Instagram by posting pictures of her ideal lifestyle. Now she feels that nothing is good enough and even if she gets thousands of likes she’s left thinking I want more. Essena built her life around making herself and lifestyle seem perfect but now she is realizing that her life is no where near perfect and that having 500,000 followers on Instagram doesn’t make her happy.
Essena has begun a new journey of fighting against Social media by deleting social media accounts, 2,000 photos on her Instagram and re-captioning every post to showing the truth and desire for social approval. Essena also posted a very emotional video on her youtube channel, telling her story and experience through social media. (this video and all her other social media sites have now been deleted) Essena is trying to tell woman that you’re life shouldn’t be built on waiting for others approval or trying to fit into a mold that society has created. Women’s value is so much more than their looks and bodies, its about their accomplishments and achievements.
This is one of Essena’s older posts, where she changed the caption and put the truth behind this post.
Essena once again is trying to highlight the reality behin her social media posts.
Essena is taking a huge step towards changing the way people look at social media today. I admire her bravery and strength to stand up against society and reveal how fake her social media has become. Social media is an amazing space to communicate and share your life with friends and families thousands of miles away but also puts pressure on people to become an ideal person. Social media and advertising should be made to inspire and emphasize people’s potential and captablity as humans, not make them feel inferior.