Discussing the carefully constructed lives we live on Instagram
In October 2015, teenager and model Essena O’Neill quit social media. Despite having over 500,000 followers, she shut down her Instagram account. She began the conversation on the fake-ness of the platform.
She deleted more than 2000 photos and edited the captions of the remaining posts so that they were more honest. Photos of her in a bikini were suddenly captioned with statements like “stomach sucked in, strategic pose, pushed up boobs.”…
Social networks are now a part of us. Our thumbs scroll on their own. Without our phones and our Facebook or Twitter accounts, we’d be truly lost. These profiles allow us to express ourselves to an audience that’s bigger than ever before. We can also see photos of what our friends have been up to at the weekend, and follow celebrities on Instagram. We have access to the lives of millions of people and we are supposedly more connected than ever. But with this connection comes comparison. And isolation. And the feeling of not being as “cool,” or pretty, or popular as your online friends.
This blog is looking at this idea much more closely and will be focusing on one social network in particular. …
