Teenage Model Edits Instagram Posts To Reveal The Ugly Truth Behind Social Media

She looked like she had it all. Young, beautiful, successful — and a massive online following to prove it.

But 18-year-old Instagram sensation Essena O’Neill was miserable, and last week, the Australian teenager deleted 2,000 photos from her account, re-captioned several old photos with the “truth” behind them, and changed the name of her account to “Social Media Is Not Real Life.”

“I believed how many likes and followers I had correlated to how many people liked me,” she explained on her new blog, Let’s Be Game Changers.

“I didn’t even see it happening, but social media had become my sole identity. I didn’t even know what I was without it.”

Essena wants to raise awareness among young women of “getting caught up” in social media: “I just want younger girls to know this isn’t candid life, or cool or inspirational. It’s contrived perfection made to get attention.”

The teenager is now exposing what was behind her “candid” Instagram shots — “stomach sucked in, strategic pose, pushed up boobs” — to show young people how fake social media is.

Here is the brave woman explaining her decision to quit social media in her own words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=gyI2Sugw6Yc

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