My social media image was a lie
Dear friends around the world,
I came across this article on Facebook and found her video compelling. I have come across people who are very much in the same predicament. I find it very sad that some people live for ‘likes’ and acknowledgement from perfect strangers. You want approval, meaning and substance from something that can never give you this. You live all day to post about your lunch, your friends, your most mundane activities, your clothes, your shopping and even your dirty laundry at times publicly. Who is really interested I sometimes think. It’s difficult to see some people who have a ‘need’ to do this. Watch her video. It is very honest and telltale. This girl mentions the real reasons why she had to post up pictures of herself non-stop.
Social media can be positive, empowering end educational and we should use it for that purpose. I hope by posting this, it helps many others realize what is happening.
Tsem Rinpoche
19-Year-Old Instagram Model Admits Her “Perfect Life” Was A Lie & Exposes The Ugly Truth Behind Social Media
November 3, 2015 by Alanna Ketler
Essena O’Neil is a 19-year-old Australian Instagram star and she recently opened up and revealed the truth about her life, and the shots that made her famous on social media.
She started a blog and a YouTube account and was posting all over social media when she was in high school. It wasn’t long before this completely consumed her life. She became a widely known online sensation garnering over half a million followers on Instagram and over 250,000 YouTube subscribers.
“I fell in love with this idea that I could be of value to other people,” she wrote. “Let’s call this my snowballing addiction to be liked by others.”
It wasn’t too long before she was getting sponsorship opportunities and was able to completely support herself. She was also offered to model in L.A.
Many young girls completely looked up to O’Neil and were even obsessed with her. Little did they know that behind that pretty face, she was totally unhappy.
“Yeah 16-year-old Essena would have been like ‘WTF girl you have the dream life,’” she wrote. “So why did I feel so lost, lonely and miserable?”
Very recently O’Neil decided that she had completely had enough and realized that she wasn’t living an authentic life. She then decided to make a drastic change in her life and announced to her followers that she is quitting social media, and she has already begun editing all of the captions on her photos to tell the truth behind the pictures.
“I was addicted to what others thought of me, simply because it was so readily available,” she wrote. “I was severely addicted. I believed how many likes and followers I had correlated to how many people liked me. I didn’t even see it happening, but social media had become my sole identity. I didn’t even know what I was without it.”
Not only has she deleted her Tumblr account, but she plans to stop posting on YouTube as well. She has also deleted over 2,000 pictures from her Instagram account; she says they served no real purpose other than self-promotion.
She also went as far as to admit that her “hot body” shots were the results of unhealthy habits…
“A 15 year old girl that calorie restricts and excessively exercises is not goals. Anyone addicted to social media fame like I once was, is not in a conscious state,” she wrote on the above photo.
“…Stomach sucked in, strategic pose, pushed up boobs,” O’Neill wrote. “I just want younger girls to know this isn’t candid life, or cool or inspirational. Its contrived perfection made to get attention.”
“Without realizing, I’ve spent majority of my teenage life being addicted to social media, social approval, social status and my physical appearance,” she wrote. “Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real.”
She also opened up about how she was making money from some of her posts and was completely honest about how there were no actual “candid” photos, they were all staged and even photoshopped.
Essena O’Neil Is Being The Change
What this young woman is doing is absolutely incredible. Having the courage to open up and be honest about everything she was doing is an amazing feat in itself. She is now able to be an excellent role model for all of her younger fans and they will know the truth and the true cost of this “success.” Some of her more recent posts are geared toward exposing the lies behind what you see on social media.
O’Neil has also started up a new website LetsBeGameChangers.com to tell her full story, she is also challenging for her fans to give up social media for 1 week. She hopes to encourage others to be present and live life, authentically.
Check out her final YouTube video below
Or view the video on the server at:
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/essena.mp4
Source: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/11/03/19-year-old-instagram-model-admits-her-perfect-life-was-a-lie-exposes-the-ugly-truth-behind-social-media/
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Social Media and the internet is where most people are on. If we can tap into such networks and the messaging is such that it for the benefit of people, many people will be benefitted, like most powerful things in the modern world, some things can be a double edged swords, it can cut both ways.
The life we live is already an illusion, on top of that we define ourselves via of our social media identity thats a double whammy.
I think that it was about time that someone spoke up about this. Social media is a very influencing platform as it reaches many people. Because of this reason, people should not be fooled with unreal content. Like this situation for example, this instagram model came out with the truth and admitted that the way she appears on social media isn’t actually how her life is.
Many people have different lives on social media than they do in reality. Why is that? I would say it is because some people are insecure about themselves and they only express themselves truly on social media. I feel that this is a bad thing as it tells the public you are someone else.
When on social media we should be ourselves. I have a set of rules when on social media. I only post what i want to, and i only socialise with people i know personally. This makes social media very fun and easy for me 🙂
I’m not a fan of social media. I used to have a Facebook account a long while ago and then the movie “The Social Network” came out and after I watched the movie I went home and deleted my Facebook account. It wasn’t until I joined Kechara in August 2013 that I opened a Facebook account again and it is only to serve a very specific purpose related to dharma.
Social media is indeed a powerful platform that can be used to achieve almost anything – fame, fortune, fantasy, friendship, fraud, fun,…..but in it’s disguise it is also the world’s biggest “open world” online game.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players and social media brought the stage of play into cyberspace. There are no rules and there are no boundaries, it’s non-stop and the pace keeps quickening and it continues to accelerate as technology usher us into light speed era.
I think social media feeds into the instant gratification syndrome of the generation born in the internet era. With such a wide stage of play, can we still predict what the future generation of society will be like. The signs of a dysfunctional society/generation is already emerging with social media – Essena O’Neil is a product of this. It’s not all social media’s fault. Society merely could not catch up with the social impact of technological advancement.
One day we may very well be faced with technological singularity, a point beyond which events may become unpredictable or even unfathomable to human intelligence.
Although Essena has taken a wrong move in her early teens and fall into the trap of social media, I respect her courages to come out and admitted her mistakes.
It is not easy to admit the mistakes of oneself and what more to openly admit it in public, over the internet.
It is sad that a person so young at 12 years old would think that social media is a place to find attention, love, appreciation and be valued from the ‘like’ on her pictures. Why can the perception be so wrong? Is it that there is not enough care between human now that she needs to find it from the ‘unreal’ and virtual world.
Having said so, I still think that social media is a good and powerful platform to share information. It is based on our motivation and how we utilise this platform which is important. For example, social media is so useful to share dharma knowledge, news, good values and etc.
I hope Essena would be able to stay strong to continue her journey in a right way.
Essena O’Neil is a teenager who rose to stardom through her photo posting on Instagram where she garnered 250k followers. Due to her famous status on social media, she was offered sponsorship opportunity and led a celebrity lifestyle since 16 years old. But she was not happy.
Much time and effort were channeled at fabricating the type of posting that appeal to the flickered minded public. She is lucky to have come to the realization how this had consumed her life and is brave enough to quit.
The addiction that Essena suffered from and revealed is not unknown or uncommon to us. Many of us are numbers chaser when it comes to FB “likes”. The “likes” feed the self-cherishing mind, inflat our ego. There are no personality behind the “likes”. Genuine relationship comes from reaching out and living an authentic life with real people.
Thank you Rinpoche for this impact-ful blogpost. Also thank you Pastor Adeline for her in-depth sharing during the Blogchat Dharma sharing session on Tuesday night. It serves as a reminder for us to reduce our attachment to social media “likes”. Social media can be used for purposes other than promoting our self-cherishing mind.
Humbly, bowing down,
Stella Cheang
So many people strive to be ‘popular’ online to validate themselves, manipulating photos and captions to give the idea they are happy just to get ‘followers’ … And be ‘idolised’… When NONE of that truly matters and that’s what can be wrong with social media.. we have to real in life social media happiness is just short term….
It takes a lot of courage to be honest in front of the world. It takes a lot of compassion to tell people a truth that they don’t want to hear because being deluded gives us the “back door” for being victims and being irresponsible.
Social media is a powerful tool that can be used to spread knowledge and wisdom or social disaster. The distinction is in the motivation of the user.
For people who have seen this video, it is a wake up call to change our course and consciously work to benefit the world through sincere sharing that is intended to bring good to others
Nowadays, there are people whom social media matters more than ‘real’ people in their lives, for example, likes are more important than approvals from people who matters to them. They seek “social” approval, “social” status, and obsessed with how their physical appearance photos show up on social media platforms. Crafting to appear “perfect” on social media is living a lie. Do we really want our self-worth to be ruled by likes?
About 75% of women have exhibited symptoms of disordered eating at some point in their life, and while a lot of factors determine one’s body image and relationship to food, the constant barrage of societal expectations to look a certain way definitely doesn’t help. Following Instagram-famous models as a reminder to work toward looking a certain way is an all-too-common practice, and because social media and smart phones are everywhere, it’s easier than ever to gain a very superficial level of access into what we think are these models’ “perfect” lives.
If we look at society’s idea of the perfect body image for women based on the average fashion model, we would think that the perfect woman was about 5’10” and weighed only 120 pounds. However, the National Center for Health Statistics reports that the average American woman is only about 5’4” and weighs about 169 pounds. It’s important to understand that the ideal body image as presented by the popular media is not healthy. Of course media images are not the only cause of eating disorders but there is no doubt that we are heavily influenced by societal pressures, the media, and now social media.
I’m glad that Essena now hopes to initiate a movement where an individual’s worth is not determined by their physical attributes or social media influence, giving people the opportunity to be free, grow, learn and explore while challenging their own beliefs. Although there has been quite a bit of backlash against Essena since her video was published, but whatever our feelings toward her or social media, she is speaking up about important topics that impact people every single day.
Just as the number of likes or followers one’s social accounts doesn’t make one a better person, neither does what one’s body looks like, or which designer dress/bag we wear, or what car we drive. In fact, focusing too much on these things often translates into a worse quality of life, because we are so focused on tearing ourselves down for the things we don’t have.
I never really understood nor liked social media. Why would anybody be so silly to tell the whole world and advertise where you live, what you eat, what you are doing etc… it’s like you’re inviting a whole lot of trouble to your door step. Well that was my very old traditional thinking until Rinpoche made me realise that we can use social media to do good… to empower people, to focus out and help someone. Only until then, did I slowly (though reluctant in the beginning) adopt this new method of reaching out.
It is the same wisdom Rinpoche taught that can be applied in various situations…. WHAT’S THE MOTIVATION? If the motivation is to promote something good, bring a change, provide helpful information, create positive conscious society, send love, perhaps change and save someone’s life…. then by all means social media it and make go viral if possible. But if it is just focused on the me, me, me, it is seriously going to be very tiring. And it is a siren warning on a deep seeded psychological issue of a very low self-esteem person who is screaming for approval/love in the wrong way. It becomes another “addiction” another “drug” only this one makes you go “mental” without you even realising it because it is “legal” and LIKED.
It is so sad that many people these days do lead their lives depending on how many LIKES and FOLLOWERS/FRIENDS they have who are all basically fake. Maybe 5 out of the thousands are real true friends you can call any time of the day. And unlike Essena O’Neil, many do not have the good karma to “wake up” and realise from this delusional world like she does. So it is extremely important to keep checking in and ask why are we posting what we’re posting? What is the motivation behind it? When we ask ourselves these simple question and we’re happy with our answers, then we’ll know if it’s worth it.
Essena O’Neil is definitely very brave and I applaud her courage to come out, speak out and snap out of it before it is too late. Her emotions are definitely real, and all she wanted was to be love/liked, which tells me she is not feeling it from her existing family/environment, hence how she got hooked into social media. This is just my guess, but she did say she thought getting more “LIKES” on social media would bring her happiness.
Unfortunately as she became more and more popular and experienced all the glam, fame and fortune anyone could ever ask, living the life, she felt even more empty and realises she doesn’t even know who she is any more. She doesn’t even know how to connect with a real human being, having spent most of her life “on screen”. She was still unhappy and in fact she became more unhappy. How many times have we seen and hear how stories of how depressed and messed up a super star of the rich and famous. If richness was measured based on the acquisitions we have, then the rich should not be unhappy, but truth is the opposite. And most often we see the poor and village folks are the ones who are more giving and happier people though they have nothing. Again reminds me of Rinpoche’s advice “in giving, we gain everything”… somewhere along these lines.
I am so glad she realised this before it is really way too late and now instead of feeding the self-cherishing “I” she is beginning to focus out and doing something positive with it, now she can inspire others like her or about to be like her. Now I believe she will discover more happiness.
Personally, I think that social media itself is a neutral platform, it can help us to promote what we do and bring in traffic to our business and so on.
There must be a balance in everything we do, why most of the people are addicted to social medias is because they did not set boundaries for themselves therefore they kind of get overboard with it.
Besides setting boundaries, our intention to do social media is also very important. If we are using the platform to get likes and attention, it will definitely lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. Slowly we will get addicted to it and in our every day life, our only goal is to receive hundreds or thousands of likes and sweet comments.
The minute we wake up, the first thing we do is check our social media pages and see how many likes or shares we get for that post we posted, how is this a healthy lifestyle? Our main focus is shifted to something that brings us nothing else but only pain and disappointments.
I’m not saying that social media is bad, but again if it’s not used wisely, slowly we will start to abuse the platform for our own personal gains and eventually causing us to have an unhealthy lifestyle. What Essena O’Neil said is very captivating and I’m glad that there’s someone who cares enough to speak up and tell us what she did was not right, as a teenager I admire her courage and honesty.
I admired this girl for saying the truth about her failings, and her acting to correct them.
* She is honest about her mistaken concept of self worth. Many of us, including myself, typically measured or self worth with the numbers of friends we have, quantity over quality. In the social media environment, likes become a representation of one’s self worth.
* She admitted that her happiness of what she did on social media is temporarily. Even though her is already getting high likes, she kept on pursuing higher numbers of likes.
* Her attachment to self is so strong that she described it as an addiction. For some people they drink and gamble. In her case her addiction was getting famous in social media with her physical appearance. Taking selfie becomes a habituation.
* She wasted all these years, the time and effort, spent on maintaining her physical appearance. Her photos where staged and photo edited to make it look perfect. It is not naturally taken. She is even getting paid from her photos.
* She deleted her social media accounts. This is her overcoming her comfort zone.
It is worrisome that the generations who grow up with social media can be influenced easily. Does kids and teenagers have the means to cope with all of these?
谢谢仁波切的分享 !
现在的社会大多数的人尤其是少年的, 也一样沉溺在这网络的陷阱 ! 网络是个” 双面刀 ” , 它可以迅速的时间让我们往正方面增长, 相反的, 它也可以迅速的让我们往负面的方面走 ! 这是大家值得注意与思考的 !
Yeo Kwai Gin
This is one of most courageous person I have ever knew, a person who is willing to forgo all her “hard” earned efforts and start all over again. She has clearly given us some of the most valuable life teachings which we should take into serious considerations.
1. Social Media is a tool to share and get updates, but when used incorrectly, it ruin someone else’s life.
2. Likes and comments might transform into real life achievement, but could be one that continues based on the likes and comments that is unreal.
3. Anything is possible on social media, it is a place where some uses to runaway from their real life.
4. True happiness doesn’t comes from being wanted and loved by complete strangers.
5. Get connect with people around you, these are the people who really cares, support and love you.
We need to connect with nature, real people and activities that bear real results through real efforts in order to really fulfil the purpose of our lives.
Brave, brave girl to expose herself like this and although she has faced a lot of criticism, whatever her real reasons are for speaking up, doing so will inspire some to rethink how they use social media.
1) I do agree that we can’t believe everything we see online. Social media gives us a false sense of identification with the people who publish the content; we think we know them based on what they make public but in reality, social media is a product of the people who use it and they can control whatever it is they want to say (which may not always be the truth).
2) one perspective (which I feel was lacking in Essena’s expose of her carefully crafted life) about social media is that we also have to take responsibility for the decisions we make. It’s one thing to blame social media for pressuring you into creating this illusion of a life; it’s another thing to dress up, pose for the photo, edit the shot, type in the captions and hit publish. At many points along the process, there were many opportunities for Essena to say ‘no’ and stop perpetuating the trade
3) having said that, I do understand where she is coming from. Although the prevalence of social media in our lives is a relatively new phenomenon, it has in a short time become very effective in encouraging and reinforcing the many afflictive emotions that are already within our mindstreams.
This is another article that details the thought process of someone who decided to dress up like Kim Kardashian for a week: http://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/i-had-my-hair-and-makeup-done-like-kim-kardashian-for-a-week
If you read the article, you will see the girl talks about how gradually, the pressure to fit in, look good and maintain the image starts to affect her. Despite the physical discomforts, she continues with the project and later, understands how people can be hypersensitive and very affected by the smallest criticism on social media.
So actually, social media is not developing anything new. What it does is highlight qualities that are already within us, and amplify it and spread it around the world much, much more quickly. What quality is that? The all-pervasive ‘I’ – social media is the perfect, FREE tool for self-promotion. It is the perfect tool for people to circumvent hard work – for many people, we will never be able to live the lives of the rich and famous but still, we want it without the hard work. It is the perfect tool to reinforce our habit to compare ourselves with others, and develop covetousness.
4) people who make social media their lives and take their cues from social media should perhaps reevaluate the priority they place on it. In actual fact, it is nothing more than a tool which, as Rinpoche says, can be positive and empowering. It can be used to bully people; it can be used to help victims of bullying.
The key issue here is the motivation with which we employ social media to get our message across. Therefore we can’t blame the tool forever. Before social media, there were other inventions and technologies that had were exploited for positive results, and for negative results. It’s like they say with photography. When you take a bad picture, is the equipment responsible or is it the responsibility of the photographer?
5) people who use social media have a responsibility to recognise the impact they have on others who are following what they are doing. When people tell us things when we are young, it has an impact on the way we think. What more is there to say about social media where things stay online for you to revisit over and over again?
So for the people on social media, are they spreading beneficial messages? Are they helping others developing positive attributes or are they using social media to fulfil some kind of deep-seated insecurities that in turn exacerbates the way someone else feels?
As Buddhists, when we use social media, we should remember that the Buddha’s guidelines on what constitutes right speech are equally relevant. I quote from http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.198.than.html:
“Monks, a statement endowed with five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken. It is blameless & unfaulted by knowledgeable people. Which five?
“It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good-will.
“A statement endowed with these five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken. It is blameless & unfaulted by knowledgeable people.”
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for highlighting this article to us. This is what I learnt in this post.
1. Social media is supremely powerful in this time. It can make one’s life as well as destroying one’s life. We have to be wise in the way we are using it otherwise it will “control” our lives without we even knowing it.
2. Essena O’Niel mentioned that when she is at a young age of 12, she is already thinking about how to be in the centre of attention, how to be popular and what not. This reflects the current thinking and mindset of the society which puts too much emphasis on looks, fame and popularity. At the age of 12, I am thinking about how to avoid eating vegetables and what not nonsense. This shows that how social media promotes false imagery of life and brainwash innocent mind to pursue something so superficial and impermanent.
3. ” I was surrounded by wealth, fame and power and yet they are all miserable and I AM MISERABLE.” Essena O’Niel
People had been chasing wealth , fame and power for all their life and some of them even lost their life to it. It is not wrong to pursue those things but we must not let them to be the only thing in our life because we “think” it is the definition of happiness which is totally wrong and ignorant. If wealth equals to happiness, then why are they so many millionaires and billionaires gave up their fleeting wealth and ordained into mookhood? Perfect examples will be Delhi’s ‘plastics king’, Bhanwarlal Raghunath Doshi and Liu Jingchong from China. If fame equals to happiness, why is there countless of actors, actresses and singers are depressed and suicidal? This clearly shows that there is more to life than just those three things and we are too ignorant to see throught it.
Chris
詹杜固仁波切曾說，是真的東西，就不需要去堆砌什麼來裝飾、武裝。
這是另一個媒體識讀的個案，也可以作為時下年輕人的借鏡。這位女生很勇敢，即使她之前在社交媒體平台上『騙』了無數的人，但最終她選擇誠實面對自己，我是佩服她的。
沒有人應該活在別人給你設定的標準裡頭。
財富並沒有在我們的生命中扮演至關緊要的角色，『富活』不如好好活著。
你若真的過得好，也無需透過炫耀來證明你過得好。
There have always been “pressure” on young ones,it is part of growing up.Problematic and sometimes painful.The socialization of young adults have been going on for ever, social media just changed the delivery method. We’ve looked at how social media have been used by people to do amazing things and bring a little joy to the world. I rejoice that Essena O’Neil realised the true purpose of social media and shared her experience with others. Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this beneficial post.
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for sharing the article and the video with us.
Many times, a lot of us are living for the likes or trying to show off our lives to others to create envy. When we see that others are doing better, we get depressed or jealous or want to out do them. What they are not realising is that are actually poisoned… diseased to be better… diseased to create more likes…more envy…
I do not understand the rationale behind all those, since I am quite the social media dummy.. hehe…
Essena O’Neil is very brave to step up and admit and overcome herself. For her to realise at 19…she will have a whole lot better, more fulfilling life ahead… [coupled with Dharma will be perfect 😀 ]
Social media should be used for empowering others, creating more “wealth” in their lives, giving more /sharing of information, to connect [only when we are far away…real connection is from the heart].
What Essena did is a good wake up call for all those teenagers out there who think social media is the “world”.
Thank you Rinpoche, for bringing this to our attention.
I’ve observed being lonely and wanting to connect to become popular or socially accepted is prevalent in young adults or teenagers. That’s why social media platform appeals to them. They were looking for venues to be connected. I am glad Essena came out of out ‘shell’ and expressed her anxiety and depressive issues she faced and shared her valuable experience with others like her. She is lucky to be able to realise now what she did hiding behind the ‘false’ life she had no value in life.
Social media is a good platform to connect with others but we don’t need to base our real life in it just to gratify our loneliness, to be popular or be attached to it. We can use social media effectively for good and virtuous deeds or cause.
When one’s life revolves around numbers of likes on Social Media to feel appreciated, to feel looked up to, and even for society approval , it becomes an obsession to satisfied one’s ego and desire have the attention, focus on yourself, to feel wanted and famous. By creating an image that is not own true self is devaluing one’s own self-worth.
Essena O’Neil life’s was all made-up images on Social Media, what you see is not her real expression, hiding behind the supermodel shot is someone who has issue that tearing her apart from within. After years of Social Media sensation, she calls it a quit due to depression and feeling miserable.
感谢仁波切的分享！ 这是一个值得令人鼓舞的文章，非常庆幸 Essena O’Neil 能及时清醒自己在网际网络所宣扬的是不良嗜好，及时纠正所有的网际朋友们关于她认为自己做没有意义的事与删除她在网际网络的个人照。
她知道这样的宣扬是会引领他人到歪道去，与其只炫耀自己如何的棒来得到赞同，那么更应该善用自己的长处来影响他人往好的一方面去做。
有很多人弯曲了网际网络的善用之处，用在好的方面可以利益无数人，用在不善之处肯定会荼毒无数人，年轻一辈的更应该要好好的运用网际网络，那么才可以找到真正的生活意义，那样也不会将自己迷失在汪洋的大海中漂浮不定。
认同Essena说的，我们的幸福感并不是用数字来锁定自己的人生，而是我们与现实生活中的生活定义。有很多我们可以做的，就像什么Essena提到的社会工作的一些例子有益的工作。
我很佩服她的勇气，每个人都会犯错，但重要的是我们能够意识到这一点，并做出了一个转折点。她很勇敢，并愿意与很多人分享她的真心话与真诚的面对着自己的所做所为，她的行动值得鼓励，她的视频是真实的，人生里头可以做很多有意义的事。
令人担忧的是世俗的快乐在最终并不能带来幸福，Essena她拥有一切但她并不开心，因为这是不够的，所以她的解决办法是她选择停止追逐她认为快乐的东西。
Incredible though it may seem, but having the courage to open up and be honest about everything, in exposing towards what lies behind what one can see what social media “really is”, is indeed a real challenge for Essence O’Neil true courage or “personal guilt”! She must have felt the personal realisation that “Honesty’s the Best Policy”. Whether one believes in religion or not is immaterial, but there is no one who does not appreciate love and compassion. The development of a kind heart(a feeling of closeness for all human beings) does not involve religiosity. It is not only for people who believe in religion, but is for everyone, regardless of race, religion or political affilation. It is for anyone who consders himself or herself, a member of the human family who may be able to see a larger perspective! Therefore, with such a true sense of compassion transforming Essence O’Neil into such a great change suddenly, seems “GOd-sent”. Her individual happiness ceases to be a conscious self-seeking effort, and becomes an automatic far superior by-product of the true process of loving and serving others. Our lives are in constant flux, bringing many difficulties, but when face with a calm and clear mind, problems can successfully be resolved or realised. All human beings agree upon the control of the indisplined mind that harbours selfishness and other roots of troubles. All also agree to follow and choose the path leading to a state that is peaceful, disciplined, ethical and wise. Perhaps it is this path that Essena O’Neal now chooses to follow, and is of the realisation that “social media should be positive, empowering and educational – and we should use it for this very purpose! May she be blessed with all successs. Om mani padmi hung.
It is true what Sarah said, that Social Media on its own is neither good or bad. We can say this about guns, and fire, and some drugs and just about anything we find around us that can either help or harm. But many of this potentially harmful things are regulated. Social media doesn’t seem to be at the moment, or loosely regulated at best.
To me, the real issue is not social media per se but how people seem to have have lost the ability to recognise their own value within themselves and have to seek eternally for constant identity and feel-good boosts. It becomes and addiction but in the case of social media, the addiction is rewarded. The way it seems to be going, the more obsessed a person is in building a social media identity which is false, like Essena did, the more he/she will be rewarded for it. After a while, it is more rewarding to to assume the false identity than to live in the real world.
The problem with social media reflects how we have lost our way. It is not the platform or the technology. For example, Tsem Rinpoche uses the social media to spread good values. Others use the same platform to spread hate and degeneration. Ultimately it is a human problem and an psychological and emotional one.
In any case, Essena’s message is a very important one and I am glad she saw and arrested her problem quickly enough.
Social media is not good or bad in itself. It depends on how people use it – for good purposes or for selfish reasons. It’s good that Essena O’Neil has realised the disadvantages of social media and has decided to change her life for the better. I hope she will find the happiness she is seeking.
I believe that social media is a great place to learn and grab a lots of new information but it is not much of nice place to be when you’re famous on social media. I have seen many YouTubers like Nigahiga, the Smosh and etc, I found out that being on social media has taken up most of their time also they have to work extremely hard to create new skits because they must think of things that are original, sometimes the people instead of appreciating them, the people would often criticize them and give them a bunch of nasty comments.
I’m really glad that O’Neil has taken a step forward and leave social media, it isn’t really a nice place to be. Now wherever I go, I will always see people going on a date but instead of chatting, these people are literally glued to their phones. It’s like they are going our for no reasons, how can you call that enjoyable, fun?
The most annoying part is that everybody is taking pictures of the food they’re gonna eat and posting them online. The thing is, when something amazing is in front of you, instead of just taking pictures and post them online, you should enjoy the moments with your eyes, live that moment. Because the moments passes by very quickly and at least keep some memories within your heart so you will never regret anything you have done when you’re old.
What was created for entertainment and social networking has gone to the extremes. The whole media related industry such as movies, magazines, advertisements are lies and delusions. Yet, it has a strong influence on people’s minds and creates the want in people for that perfect life, body and fame. As time goes by, people realises celebrities and models have different imperfect lives offscreen. With social media, it’s different. It feels real. People are trusting real life testimonies (although paid) because it’s been staged by real people such as Essena O’Neil who makes people believe they are who they are online.
Even offline, people chase for wealth, nice things, recognition, acceptance, power and security. So much time is wasted when it can be used for something more useful like volunteering in an animal shelter as per what Essena quoted.
Ultimately, worldly concerns does not bring happiness. Essena realises this when she have everything yet she is not happy because it’s never enough. The solution is to stop chasing for things that doesn’t matter at the time of death.
Social media is actually a great and powerful tools that can bring benefits if you use it correctly. It’s a tool that provide information to the mass. But if we get too obsessed with it, it will make us out of control and loose ourself and our life. What Essena said is true that our happiness doesn’t define by numbers but by being real with our life. There are a lot of beneficial work we can do as just as what Essena mentioned which some example of social work.
I admire her courage. Everyone make mistake but what important is we able to realise it and make a turning point. She is brave enough and willing to share with many people. Her action with the video this time is real. True hapiness I beileve is being real for others to be happy.
Good on Essena to be able to not only realise what she had, but to also honestly, openly and bravely share it with…the world. Perhaps people will see it as a marketing tactic, and perhaps she will get more slack for it, but for the many who are caught in that world with insecurities, then this would be a good wake up call, for them to find the reason they do what they do, and perhaps heal and save themselves.
Social media is good, to spread messages of awareness, words of wisdoms, positive acts of kindness… but I guess when we get too obsessed, we lose touch with ourselves, the people around us, and because you keep using it to promote the “I”, you become much more self indulgent, more weary about looking good, and spending lots of precious time that we don’t have to live what others want and expect of you.
This sharing of thoughts and feelings int he video is raw, but it could not get much more truthful than that. We should totally use our lives, for the betterment of others.
I think social media is a good way to disseminate knowledge and share valuable information. However, it has been used widely to promote oneself for whatever reason, and for companies to advertise their services and products. It is up to the individual what he/she wants to post following the guidelines that would not offend the general public. And it is also up the individual to realise not to get caught up with the ‘highs’ as stated here by Essena O’Neil. Yes, social media can be addictive if it is used to attract attention. Parents should be vigilant of their children’s social media activities especially looking out for Internet predators prowling for young victims.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this video with us, I m glad that this young girl realize that life is not about fame and praise, she is the perfect role modal for the young people to learn because our world now is too materialistic so people have loss out the value of love and kindness.
Thank you Rinpoche for the sharing.
We as parents should set good example and inspired our children with good deeds and thoughts as well.
Engaging in dharma work is healthy and very beneficial for all.
Glad to know that Essena O’Neil had finally realised whatever she is doing is not healthy.
We must show a good example to our young people so they don’t get caught up with superficiality, materialism and thinking the more we have the happier we will be. Tsem Rinpoche
In this age of technology, social media, internet and etc, there are lots of projection and delusion that is been disseminate to the world…and this has cause lots of people to think, and thought that it is real, and everything is so wonderful, flawless, beautiful people is happy, beauty is the most compelling item, and etc. It is so deluded marketing and message to the world.
She has repeatedly saying that at the age of 12 years old, (and owning to her oneself at this age) she wanted to feel that she is being valued, recognise and etc….and after being famous and have so much “hits”of likes and acknowledgement from the social media, she stills feel empty at this age of 19 years old. She also said that it is always a fake projection of herself to the world, that she is happy, and makes every moved or action that she would, so that people would like her and it is never enough, and yet when this success, she feels empty in herself.
I pray that she will be better, and be happier after her realisation. Om Mani Pedme Hum.
It is true with regards to most of the pictures we are seeing in instagram and magazine are all edited. Edited to the point of our so call perfection the society lead us to believe.
Lets us all not be obsess with how people think and feel about us when using social media. Just enjoy ur natural self and u be a happier person.
Thank U Rinpoche for sharing.
Even it’s not illusion on social media we built up ourselves. We actually to certain extent live in illusion we build up in our life, even we did not post anything “not so real” on social media. I believe with Internet and Facebook and etc, it’s easy for almost everyone to become a hero or model or celebrity. It’s like snowball, lies cover with lies. And it’s no ending. It’s “happy ending” with O’Neil decided to be true to herself and be happy than be famous and looks perfect.
Thank you Rinpoche for posting this eyeopening video. What strikes me is that there is so much wisdom on such young shoulders. I applaud her realisation that there is more to life than what many post on social media, and happiness is not through fame and wealth, just as Rinpoche teaches. With her determination to live life in n the present, live a better quality of life and her movement to help others through her own experience and to live a more meaningful life is very commendable, I wish Essens the best in her endeavors.