At 18 years old, Australian model Essena O’Neill announced that despite having more than half a million followers on Instagram, 200,000 on YouTube and Tumblr, and 60,000 on Snapchat, she is quitting social media for good. But why, you might ask. That’s like every little girl’s dream, you might say. Precisely, she would respond.

I’m quitting Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr. Deleted over 2000 photos here today that served no real purpose other than self promotion. Without realising, I’ve spent majority of my teenage life being addicted to social media, social approval, social status and my physical appearance. Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real. It’s contrived images and edited clips ranked against each other. It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation in views, success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated self absorbed judgement. I was consumed by it. I spent majority of my day aimlessly scrolling, hours on YouTube… How can we see ourselves and our true purpose/talents if we are constantly viewing others? Many of us are in so deep we don’t realise it’s delusional powers and the impact it has on our lives. There’s a select few photos I left here, half are original captions that I believe to be educational, the other half are photos that deluded you. It was never my conscious intention, but I deluded a lot of people…Call it deception, manipulation, lying, not saying the whole truth… I was both addicted to social approval and terrified no one would value me for myself. So I rewrote the captions of these false photos with short shots of reality. EVERYTHING EXPLAINED IN THE LINK IN MY BIO. There’s no likes or views or followers there. Just my content as raw as I want. It’s all going to be free of course. My main vegan videos will still be on YouTube, but vimeo will host all the new quality content. Made to help not to get views or $$$. How will I spread my message? Organically. If it moves someone, they tell their friends about it, simple as that. I’ll be talking about vegansim, creative imagery with purpose, poems, writing, interviews with people that inspire me, and of course the finical reality behind deluding people off Instagram…I was so caught up in it all. P.S when the new form of social sharing comes out, something that doesn’t revolve around likes and views but based on similar topics/quality for example, I will see you there, whenever that day comes…. We must create change.

In her last Youtube video posted on Monday, Essena posted a 17 minute video that explained to the world how fake her life had become and that she was tired of it. She warned her followers of the fake life that social media stars had to lead and that every meet up, chat or photo was all about Instagram popularity.

After deleting around 2 000 Instagram posts, she renamed her account to “Social Media Is Not Real Life” and re-edited the captions of other posts to tell the truth behind the image. Her commentary pretty much tunes every single ‘type’ of pic one would see on the ‘gram:

To the yogis:

To the “simply uneducated”:

To the model:

To the bikini slayer:

To the selfie-enthusiast (this one is great):

Essena has a lot of anger and a lot of issues to work through and tell the world. And it’s great. She has started a website called letsbegamechangers.com and, although there are still pics of her beaing helathy and pretty, she is using it to focus on changing for the good – such as promoting healthy eating and veganism, as well as writing and speaking about confidence and living a positive life.

At 18 years old, she has some deep things to say and has a wonderful understanding of how she got to where she is and how the whole idea of social media fame lapped her up.

I know you didn’t come into this world just wanting to fit in and get by. You are reading this now because you are a game changer, you might not know your power yet, I am just finding mine, but man… when you do… far out you’ll go crazy. It’ll be brilliant. You’ll be brilliant.

[source: time]