Hey guys! So if you haven't heard yet, Essena O'Neill has decided to quit social media.
This has started a huge debate on whether or not social media is bad, fake, negative
and overall just destroying the world. I want to discuss a lot of things in this
video but I want to start off by saying that I am proud of and respect Essena for her decision.
Hearing how she used to feel about herself and what she was using social media for is
really really sad. She didn't feel good about herself unless
she had her self worth confirmed by the number of followers she had and the like count on
her pictures and videos, and that's wrong. She discusses spending countless hours trying
to take the perfect picture to please everyone else and to prove that she's pretty and has
this amazing life. She is making this big change and exposing
how fake her social used to be for her 15 year old self.
Basically if she had someone like her current self to look up to when she was 15 then maybe
she wouldn't have focused on these superficial goals and saw her best assets as being attractive.
And although I do agree with a lot of the points she makes, at the end of the day, I
just don't think her situation is everyones reality.
Social media may have hurt her but it saved me.
My 15 year old self didn't need someone telling me that there's more to life than being pretty
and having the best body and making your life look like it's so perfect.
My 15 year old self needed to see someone living fearlessly, being herself and doing
what makes her happy rather than what makes everyone else happy.
I needed to see someone confident enough to post a selfie and not worry if someone was
going to say, oh wow she's so into herself. Everyone looks for a role model in a different
way and in a different person, but we all need to see someone conquering their fears,
no matter what those fears may be. Rather than thinking that all social media
is bad, or that if someone takes a picture specifically to post to Instagram they're
wrong. We need to focus on the real issues at hand.
And those problems start from within ourselves. The real problem we have is comparing ourselves
to everyone else and competing with them by pulling them down rather than uplifting one
another and challenging each other. For me, social media is a scrapbook it's not
diary. I want to cherish the good and focus on the
positive things happening in my life. We all need to understand that these are small
snap shots into our lives. Just because we don't share the bad doesn't
mean it's fake. You aren't going to see me sharing pictures
of me crying or talking about how I had the most awful day,
and if you do share that that's okay too! But it's just not who I am and just because
I'm not sharing those moments doesn't mean that they're not there and they don't exist
in my life and it also doesn't make me fake or my social media forms fake by any means.
And on the other hand, you don't see every amazing moment in my life.
Whether I just didn't capture it or I want to keep it private.
You simply don't see every little aspect of a person's life through social media.
And to think any different;y is just pure ignorance.
These platforms are very tiny windows into a persons life.
So of course you aren't going to see every corner and closet.
Even a YouTuber who daily blogs for years is only posting, what, a 24 minute video at
most every day which is not even 1/48 of their day.
You simply just don't see most of our lives. We edit what is shown and control what is
being received whether we mean to or not. Social media is what helped me accept who
I am. Social media is what helped me find confidence
and realize that I am worth so much just the way I am.
Social media helped bring me and and my amazing girlfriend together.
Social media helped me find some of my best friends in my life.
And social media has helped me understand people who are completely different than myself.
By being able to see people from all over the world and understand that everyone is
so different and that is a beautiful thing. To fix this problem that people are saying
social media is causing, is not to focus on changing social media but changing ourselves
and the way we think. We need to find happiness in ourselves first
so we aren't comparing our absolute worst days to the best snap shots of other people's
lives. We also need to be aware that what we're seeing
online isn't the whole story and it never will be, it just can't.
But seeing someone have an amazing vacation shouldn't make you feel bad about yours and
seeing a girl have an awesome hair day shouldn't make you feel bad about your bad hair day
because she probably has them too. Another big negative aspect people are saying
social media has is the use of ads. Ads are nothing new.
Celebrity endorsements are nothing new. Today very few people are watching commercials
on TV. So now companies are challenged to come up
with creative ways to get their products out there.
Rather than have your favorite movie star paid millions of dollars to endorse a boxed
hair color company, that I assure you she does not use herself, companies are giving
social media influencers the power to promote products.
Many of these companies hand pick the people who they are going to have endorse these products.
This is based on who that person is, the content they create and the demographic of the people
watching this content. It is so much more specific and target that
most times we actually get to hear about products we really do care about.
Now are all of these ads going to apply to everyone all the time and is every person
posting an ad fully believing in the product, no of course not.
But if that's a problem that's not a social media problem, that's an advertisement that
has existed for as long as ads have. These post include hashtags and disclaimers
that they are ads. So if you don't want to look at it you simply
can scroll right past it. You don't have to go buy the product or even read what's written
about the product. But this should be seen as a positive change
to social media. Artists, comedians, gamers, personality vloggers,
all work very hard to create content. And contrary to popular belief, money doesn't
just flow in when you are making videos. And it can be quite expensive to produce these
videos and afford the equipment and materials it takes to create them.
By taking on these branding deals your favorite YouTubers, Instagramers, Vinners, whatever
you prefer, are able to create better and more consistent content for you.
And if you feel like a certain person is ruining their content and credibility by posting too
many ads or ads that just don't apply to anybody, it's really easy to let them know.
You can unfollow people. You can not watch their content if you don't
like it. It's such a unique system where the content
creator and the viewer have direct interaction with one another, so you can tell someone
if you don't like the content they're producing or if you want to see something specific.
But at the same time these creators have the ability to ignore this critique and do what
they want to do. And that's awesome and something to be celebrating
not disliked. Social media is very powerful.
It can be positive or negative but it's up to us to make it what it is.
Although some people may be using it in a negative way, it's wrong to invalidate the
good and positive powers of social media. So these were just my ideas on the debate
of social media right now. I just felt like it was very necessary to
share this side. I know other people have been as well but
I felt passionate about it. I would love to start an open conversation
about this topic. So feel free to comment below and talk to
one another and I'll chat with most of you about it as well.
And just want to hear your thoughts on it and if you agree with what I said or disagree
with what I said or want to add to anything I said.
So let me know and let's chat about it! Alright see you guys next week!
Bye!