--- title: Teen Instagram Star Essena O'Neill Quitting Social Media description: Teen Instagram star Essena O'Neill speaks out about the ugly truth behind social media fame canonical: https://time.com/4096988/teen-instagram-star-essena-oneill-quitting-social-media/ author: Megan McCluskey article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-02T20:55:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:39:44.339Z og:title: Teen Instagram Star Reveals Why She Is Quitting Social Media og:description: "It's perfectly orchestrated self absorbed judgement. I was consumed by it" og:url: https://time.com/4096988/teen-instagram-star-essena-oneill-quitting-social-media/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blteaa7dce52529ecfd/69886f35a988caac886b5192/essena-o_neill.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2338 og:image:height: 1315 og:image:alt: Essena-O’Neill og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Teen Instagram Star Reveals Why She Is Quitting Social Media twitter:description: "It's perfectly orchestrated self absorbed judgement. I was consumed by it" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blteaa7dce52529ecfd/69886f35a988caac886b5192/essena-o_neill.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Teen Instagram Star Speaks Out About The Ugly Truth Behind Social Media Fame > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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As Instagram turns 5, the co-founder and CEO talks about where the app is headed_  by [Megan McCluskey](https://time.com/author/megan-mccluskey/)  ## Megan McCluskey Staff Writer Nov 2, 2015 8:55 PM UTC Social media celebrity Essena O'Neill has taken herself off social media, calling it a  by [Megan McCluskey](https://time.com/author/megan-mccluskey/)  ## Megan McCluskey Staff Writer Nov 2, 2015 8:55 PM UTC Essena O’Neill announced that despite having more than half a million followers on [Instagram](https://instagram.com/essenaoneill/), 200,000 on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCOT5oNCUGCgyuAVntA8iog) and Tumblr, and 60,000 on Snapchat, she is quitting social media for good. The 18-year-old Australian was living what seemed like a “perfect” life, but she’s taking a stand against the ideals social media presents. On Monday, she posted a YouTube video—her last—explaining her decision after deleting 2,000 Instagram photos last week and renaming her account to “Social Media Is Not Real Life.” She even edited the captions on photos she kept to reflect the truth of what happened “behind” the image. “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,” she wrote on an [Instagram post](https://instagram.com/p/9VHhoytDXA/?taken-by=essenaoneill) from Oct. 27\. “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.” In the caption of the YouTube video from Monday, O’Neill spoke about how unhappy her social media obsession made her. “I spent hours watching perfect girls online, wishing I was them. Then when I was ‘one of them’ I still wasn’t happy, content or at peace with myself,” she wrote. Now, the teen is launching her own website called [Let’s Be Game Changers](http://www.letsbegamechangers.com) where she hopes to continue to educate people about the destructive nature of trying to gain approval online. “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,” she wrote. ## Transcript [00:01] You can see the world happening in real time through [00:04] instagram and I think that's true whether it's Taylor [00:07] Swift's 1989 tour which trends on instagram all the [00:10] time, or an important moment like a protest over seas, [00:14] or a march like Je suis Charlie, in Paris. [ SOUND ] [00:21] [ MUSIC ] [00:24] When we launched Instragram nearly five years ago [00:27] now, October 6th of 2010, we tapped launched [00:32] Right before midnight, thinking, ok, everyone's asleep. [00:35] But, you know, we were a little naive and we didn't [00:37] realize that midnight Pacific time actually meant that it [00:41] was morning in Europe and midday elsewhere. And, all [00:45] of a sudden, people just started rolling in in droves. [00:47] The stress of keeping servers up was actually Literally [00:51] what kept us up at night. [ MUSIC ] [00:57] When I was a junior in college, I got to take a really [01:00] awesome photography class. And my photography [01:03] teacher the day I arrived, I had this new fancy camera [01:06] with a fancy lens, and he took it away and he said no, [01:09] today you're gonna use this. And it was a Plastic Holga [01:12] camera. And it took pretty blurry photos. They were [01:15] square. And he taught me you could add chemicals to [01:18] the development bath and it would change the tone of [01:20] the actual developed photo. It was just a lesson I just [01:24] applied later when we started creating Instagram. We [01:26] had to create something that incentivized you to take [01:29] photos and filters for it. So I'd say that class really put [01:33] its mark on Instagram in the long run. I [01:38] wanted, and Mike my co- founder wanted to as well, [01:42] create something where we could share what we were [01:44] doing in the moment. Images can be an international [01:47] language. You don't have to speak English to [01:50] understand someone's photo. Really pivotal [01:54] moment for us was Hurricane Sandy. An [01:58] entire coast of the United States came together on [02:02] social media in a way that I don't think you really saw [02:05] before. At the end of the day, there's no better way to [02:08] consume what's happening in the world, other than [02:11] images. And video and I think Instagram's at the [02:14] natural nexus of both of those. The [02:18] next decade, at least on Instagram, will the be decade [02:21] where we realize the power of a collective group of [02:24] people capturing the world in real time through their [02:28] phones. I don't think we quite understand how that will [02:31] Disrupt industries. I hope, in a hundred years, [02:35] that I'll be around to see what people think about [02:39] Instagram. But I know that human nature to connect [02:43] with other people and the human need to [02:46] communicate visually and To see what's happening in [02:48] the world, will never go away. [ MUSIC ] [02:50] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4096988/teen-instagram-star-essena-oneill-quitting-social-media/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4096988/teen-instagram-star-essena-oneill-quitting-social-media/"},"headline":"Teen Instagram Star Speaks Out About The Ugly Truth Behind Social Media Fame","datePublished":"2015-11-02T20:55:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-05T08:39:44.339Z","description":"\"It's perfectly orchestrated self absorbed judgement. 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