How is it possible that many Instagram accounts have a lot of followers with few likes or vice versa. Are people using social media for the wrong reasons?

An Australian teenager named Essena O’Neill with more than a half a million followers posted a video on YouTube. In her video, she said she had deleted nearly 2,000 photos off her Instagram because they were paid self-promotions. In her video she described her life as miserable. People perceived that she had a perfect life, yet these photos were edited, contrived and solely for the number of views, likes and followers.

O’Neill said social media is a “business.” In her video she said, “When you’re following someone and they have a lot of followers and they’re promoting products, they are paid. Companies will email you about…what you should say with times of the day to post and what you should do in the photo. Companies know the power of social media and they are exploiting it.”

Are individuals like O’Neill affecting teens that are using social media regularly?

The amount of fake followers may not be apparent to all users and that may be the reason  many believe that the individual’s followers are legitimate. The reason behind buying followers and likes varies. 

“Some people buy their followers because it makes them feel happy about it. If you feel happy about it then why not do it? If I had money, I think I would do it,” senior Robyn Keith said.

Being a part of social media can either build or depress self-esteem depending on the manner in which the user applies it to their life.

“I believe it builds self-esteem, but with everything there’s a thin line to it. There’s a boundary that sets it from self-esteem to desire and lust. Lust in a sense of wanting to fit in and conforming to modern society’s manipulated representation of normal. It creates ridiculous social standards. There’s  a limit to everything and once posting a picture about continuous bikini shots about those new clothes or whatsoever starts becoming a norm, it turns from a self-esteem booster into insecurities. The cycle of conforming to social standards reanimates, ” said senior Brandon Kong.

According to degreed.com, social media forces individuals to compare their lives with others. Social media is an idealized version of what others desire to see. In 2012, a team of researchers in the UK surveyed social media users and 51 percent claimed that social media made their confidence decrease.

When I first used social media, I thought it was solely to see my friends’ updates and to allow my friends to see your updates. Over time, the purpose of social media has drastically changed and many people are using social media for the wrong reasons.

Several students at MHS use social media for different purposes.

“I 99 percent of the time use Instagram to share my film photography with my friends and people who share the same interest,” Kong said.

“I use social media to contact people that don’t live here like my friends or family members in Japan,” Keith said.

Many users try to gain popularity through social media by displaying an exterior that is only positive. O’Neill’s pictures were nearly flawless and in almost all of them she seemed content with her life. O’Neill’s story proves that social media is a place where individuals can be fake without the viewers’ knowledge.