Scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, it’s rare to find a photograph of someone crying in the bathroom at work because their colleague screwed them over. We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups. We don’t see lonely nights in, pizza for one, debit cards being declined, the messy kitchen in your flatshare or photos of you obsessively checking your phone because someone hasn’t texted you back.
Does social media imitate real life? Absolutely not. Life has its ups and downs. Apart from commemorating a deceased person’s life, you’ll be hard-pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed.
Essena O’Neill, who has amassed more than half a million followers on Instagram, has quit social media with a plea for others to stop living their lives through a screen, and “go out and meet people to feel connected instead”. Do you feel the pressure to craft your life on social media? Do your social media followers know the real you?
O’Neill won followers by curating an Instagram account she described as “contrived perfection made to get attention”. Her Instagram account sold an enviable “dream life” that eventually made her quit social media. “For me, personally, it consumed me. I wasn’t living in a 3D world,” she posted in one of her Instagram captions.
On 27 October O’Neill edited the captions under her Instagram photos to reveal what was really happening in each one.
The Australian model and YouTube star, said the pressure to sell her ”dream life” on social media made her miserable.
“I remember I obsessively checked the like count for a full week since uploading it,” she wrote of her first-ever post, a selfie that now has close to 2,500 likes. “It got 5 likes. This was when I was so hungry for social media validation ... Now marks the day I quit all social media and focus on real life projects.”
But it is not just those of us with hundreds of thousands of followers who feel the pressure to craft a persona on social media.
What would the captions on your social media posts say if they accurately reflected your life? Do you feel the pressure to craft your life on social media? Is your self-worth ruled by likes? We want to hear from you. Tell us the realities of social media, what you think of it and how it affects your life.
Fill in the form below – you do not need to answer every question – and we’ll use a selection of responses in our reporting. Alternatively, you can email carmen.fishwick@theguardian.com
