Australian teen blogger Essena O’Neill has caused pandemonium online by eschewing Instagram and her 612,000 followers, declaring the platform to be “contrived perfection to get attention” and deleting over 2,000 pictures, which she confessed were solely for “self-promotion”. O’Neill then edited the captions of her remaining 96 photographs to expose her true motivation for having taken them: to get positive feedback on her looks; to sell products that she didn’t believe in; and to reflect her life in a glamorised version which she now says was entirely false. She has since entirely deleted the account.
I’ve read an awful lot of articles praising O’Neill’s honesty in the last day or so but none of them touch on what I think is the most obvious and pertinent point. She is 18 years old. Her epiphany certainly represents personal development in O’Neill, and honesty is always to be valued, but does it really have more meaning than that?
This isn’t the global event it has been reflected to be. In mid-to-late adolescence, we are all self-obsessed narcissists. Millennials have it particularly tough since the posturing and general eejitry of their teen years has been documented in great detail online, but previous generations were just as interested in themselves and every bit as imprudent as O’Neill’s Instagram page evidenced she was prior to her flash of insight. She began this online documentation of herself at just 15 – hardly any of us are our best selves at that age. At the very least, a lot of change and development is inevitable. O’Neill has rejected the ideals of her adolescence by turning violently against Instagram and obsession with physical appearance, as well as stressing her militant veganism.
Find me an 18-year-old who has not experienced at least one radical shift in ideology, and I’ll show you an underdeveloped teenager. One cannot ignore the irony that she chose in part to use Instagram – a platform that she has entirely rejected – to reach people with her message on the evils of that platform. Presumably, if O’Neill can use the platform for what she sees as good, then others can too.
The epiphany is a little wishy washy. Her newly valued honesty is certainly positive, but dismissing the platform she used, and those people who followed her on it, represents a failure to accept responsibility for her own choices. Instagram, like all social media platforms, can be used to make money, to misrepresent reality, and to manipulate. It can also be used to connect honestly with other people, and can be used with integrity. O’Neill’s choice to use it for what she considers harmful purposes is the problem, not the platform itself. However, her youth when she started at just fifteen, essentially gives her a pass on being completely responsible for the message she sent out into the world. Really, it should. Perhaps our bizarre obsession with what teenagers are doing and wearing is the problem. We have created a market for their looks and lives, and fed their desire to be admired and consumed like products.
What has been omitted from articles I’ve read on O’Neill’s epiphany is that radical change is a common, positive development in people of her age. At 18 we are all searching for the self that best fits us, and we generally continue to search well into our twenties. We settle into a self in and around 25 if we have developed in a standard, healthy fashion, and neurological development reaches its end. After that, we certainly continue to change, but retain some of the core values we thrashed about so much to obtain in our early twenties. This change in O’Neill is another development stage of adolescence, just like posing in bikinis doing a duck pout and revelling in attention. This stage is also being meticulously documented online. Is the fact that this is happening acceptable because what is being documented is considered more socially positive?
On her new website letsbegamechangers.com, O' Neill describes the 'life aim' that her new viewpoint has given her: "Being truly honestly happy and content in the present. Having a positive impact on other people and the world. That's it. That's my aim. I don't wish anything more from myself other than to action my values, keep learning and enjoy this crazy ass experience we call life."
She’s describing being a responsible adult and decent human being, which I would argue is the basic requirement of every human being anyway. Yes, it takes courage to turn away from a profitable life of valuing aesthetics and self-obsession and someone so young should be praised for that. But the fact that the world is entirely wowed by a teenager apparently starting to develop into a decent adult is more than a little depressing.
O’Neill has made the mistake of thinking that because her changed viewpoint is new and tenderly held, it is objectively true. There is no simple dichotomy of ‘before’ and ‘after’ here. No ‘false’ and ‘real’ self. All of our developmental stages contribute to who we are at any given time. Entirely dismissing a previous stage in one’s life, and failing to see its contribution to your personhood is a failure to understand yourself. This is an 18-year-old girl doing what most of us could do privately and without global scrutiny - growing up.
