Before You Jump on the Essena O’Neill Bandwagon, Know This.

// The Goatkeeper, Issue 1

Essena O’Neill, you’re naming the wrong enemy.

Earlier today a story broke about a beautiful young Instagram star who plans to “quit social media.” Essena O’Neill broke the curated wall she spent six years building up with a confessional YouTube video:

“I have a whole career built around social media. What I’m doing scares the absolute fuck out of me.”

Like Essena, I have a whole career built around social media. We play different roles in the same game. Scary? No. It excites the absolute fuck out of me.

But, according to Buzzfeed, Essena’s social media empire left her feeling far from validated. Staged photos, native advertising and cliques of fellow influencers estranged Essena from the life she would have rather been living. The sentiment is heart wrenching — we can relate to this girl, robbed of her childhood by a false promise of self-actualization. However, how can we say that we have social media to blame?

Instagram is the current darling of the social media industry. The platform is growing at a rate of 100M new users, and big brands love that is offers 120x the engagement per follower that Twitter does. We may have Instagram to blame for #thinspo, but don’t we also have it to thank for #62MillionGirls?

Essena, and many influencers like her, quickly get thrown into a multi-billion dollar industry with little to no guidance. This is an industry that moves too quickly to allow for “experts.” If social media professionals, like those I work with every day, still have so much to learn — how can we expect young social celebrities to grasp it?

Instagram is not Essena’s enemy. Nor is YouTube. Instead of prompting her followers to be game changers by quitting social media, I wish we could watch as she took the power in her own hands. There are many people eager to teach about the industry of social media — Essena, you were right, “social media is a business.” In this business, knowledge is power.

Follow in the footsteps of HONY — use the tools social media has to offer to connect people. Use more of the social awareness emoji and less of the kissy face. Or, like Nancy Lublin did, open your heart to the possibility that a single text message can save a life.

Technology’s impact on human culture is not the mystery we make it out to be. As the invention of stone tools changed the way our ancestors protracted nourishment, the invention of Instagram has changed the way we express ourselves socially. You, yourself, write the story —it doesn’t matter if you use hieroglyphics or Periscope to tell it.

For two years I’ve been jotting down ideas, notes and doodles — stockpiling articles that either peeve me or make me nod in agreement. This blog post has been a long time coming, but Essena’s story has finally convinced me to step onto the soapbox. It’s time to stop playing victim, and I believe the movement begins by naming the true enemy: ourselves.

The changes of the digital age — text messages, Instagram posts, YouTube videos — are no more than vehicles of self-expression. Modern technology is not the enemy, but all too often, it is the scapegoat.

Welcome to The Goatkeeper. I’ll be finding this blog a home soon, but for now you can find me here.