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Essena O'Neill is an internet celebrity from Coolum, Australia who made national and international headlines when she decided to give up social media for good.

Essena Quits Social Media

In late October of 2015, eighteen-year-old model Essena O'Neill deleted over 2,000 photos on her Instagram that had over 600,000 followers. She renamed the account "Social Media Is Not Real Life." She also went back to old posts and rewrote captions in attempts to be more transparent about what it really took to "get the shot." She also decided to quit all of her other social media accounts, including her Tumblr and Snapchat, where she had hundreds of thousands more followers.

In her book, "American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers," Nancy Jo Sales writes, "O'Neill did a powerful thing: she'd said what many people were already thinking, or had thought at some point as they posted another selfie or edited picture that made their life seem more perfect and glamorous than it actually was. There were already many girls who knew that the photos of social media stars were manipulated...There was already a heavy sense among girls that there was something insidious about their social media obsession, as well as a feeling of helplessness as to how to escape it." As Sales implies, O'Neil gave these girls an option as to how to escape the social media trap.

O’Neill said that when she quit social media she had a “$50,000 YouTube deal” in the works and “five or six” photo shoots to do in Sydney, after having already paid for trips to Thailand and Los Angeles from sponsored posts and payments from YouTube.

Initial Positive Public Response

In the first few days following her announcement, Essena's decision became viral. She shared in a (now deleted) YouTube video,"I don't ever think I've been happier than this moment. She also shares how overwhelmed she felt by the way people reached out to her and responded to her story. "I was scared that no one wants to hear the truth, that everyone's going to think I'm an attention-seeker, that I'm just complaining. But this message that likes, followers, views — that we're more than a number — it's going global."

Essena received praise for inspiring other young girls to think twice before setting unrealistic body expectations.

Essena shared that her eating and exercise habits — which included skipping meals and restricting calories — had nothing to do with self-respect and everything to do with image. "​I am an inspiration for meeting society's impossible standards for women," she stresses. "That is not inspirational. Being as slim and as toned as I was in the picture is not creating world change."

She was also praised for being transparent behind what goes behind the posed pictures she posted. She shared how she would make at least $2000AUD per post, which let her use Instagram as her income source.

Let’s Be Game Changers

After her announcement, she decided to launch a website called "Let’s Be Game Changers," where she hoped to inform people about the potential destructive nature that trying to gain approval online leads to.

In the site, she posted videos that questioned different aspects of social media and encouraged followers to think carefully about the way they use social media.

She also hoped to use the site to promote veganism, plant-based nutrition, environmental awareness, social issues, gender equality, and feature controversial art. The site included a donate button for users to help Essena's new journey. In one video posted on the site, she admitted, with tears, that she had been struggling to make ends meet.

"Behind The Image"

The site also featured a section called "behind the image," which served to shed light on what went on behind the images posted to her account.

One picture of her when she was fifteen had a caption more than 2,800 words long, where she describes the lengths her sister had gone to in order to take the photograph. “This photo would have taken at least 30 minutes of shooting to find the right white background, to check my posing, to yell some more at my sister for not ‘doing it how I wanted’. The whole process of photo-taking back then was for one purpose: to get likes,” she wrote.

Essena also decided to start using Vimeo as the only platform she hasn't quit entirely, as Vimeo does not have the same popularity-based ranking nor ads as Youtube does.

Among her series of movements to debunk social media is a video posted to Essena's Vimeo account titled "Behind The Image; makeup makes me feel better." Her video talks about the way society treats those who wear makeup, and how she felt conflicted about the process.

"When I started wearing makeup at school, I guess I started to become popular. Boys started liking me. When I started posting photos like this, it received so much attention. So I guess for me, it was like, oh, I'm better like this. Or actually, I'm not enough without this," she says. "This perfect girl in this picture that got 23,000 likes, this girl looked in the mirror most days and hated her appearance."

Following Backlash

Some days after her anouncement, backlash began to stir. O'Neill was faced with a lot of criticism from others on the Internet. Among the people who criticized her where her, perhaps most notably were her former friends (and fellow Instagram celebrities), twins Nina and Randa Nelson. The twins produced a video titled "Essena O'Neill Quitting Social Media Is a Hoax", which was dedicated to questioning Essena's claims. The twins said "Let's Be Game Changers" was "100-percent self promotion."

In a forum post on her site, Essena stated that she would not engage with the accusations. “I had a great time with them [the Nelson twins] but I was also extremely lost in the ‘celebrity construct’,” she wrote. “I wish they would have come to me personally, not share intimate details of my life. But this is my exact point about social media. People say gossip and rumors to avoid the real problems.”

Essena took down "Let’s Be Game Changers" in December 2015 because being online “felt toxic”. She donated the funds she raised from supporters to the “Animal [Rights] Foundation of Florida”, the Megan Meier Foundation to raise awareness of cyberbullying, and the Fred Hollows Foundation for blindness prevention in Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

Two months after her announcement, Essena sent out a long e-mail to her newsletter followers. In it, she addressed the reasons why she quit social media in this e-mail. "If anything my social media addiction, perfectionist personality and low self esteem made my career,” she said. “Over-sexualisation, perfect food photos, perfect travel vlogs – it is textbook how I got famous. Sex sells, people listen to pretty blondes, I just happened to talk about veganism a trending thing on YouTube.” She also addresses her shock and confusion to the negative response to her actions in the email.

Around this same time, "Let's Be Game Changers" redirected to a blank site with just her name on it. O'Neill then announced that she will be writing a satirical book called "How to Be Social Media Famous."

Life after fame

As of January 2016, Essena plans on balancing working at a local bar with writing full-time. She is working on a "satire/memoir" (assumed to be "How to Be Social Media Famous"), but hopes to write fiction in the future. She has dreamt of writing science fiction since a young age.