Essena O'Neil & Van Dijck's Neoliberal Economic Principle

Within the last month on social media, the world was introduced to the video published by the so-called Instagram and YouTube star, Essena O’Neil. In her video “Why I REALLY am quitting social media”, she elaborates to the world the truth behind her images and how she spent hours taking and editing the photos to portray a perfect lifestyle that was not real. By ‘quitting’ social media, she decided to create a new media platform to express herself again and ask for money in support of this new campaign. Thus, begging the question, is she really even quitting social media at all? In addition, she is ironically gaining more fame from her uproar of not wanting fame through Instagram anymore.

Although I do not agree with how she is generalizing all girls/social media users, in the sense that all social media persona’s are fake and similar to her own, I do believe that her viral video on quitting social media does in fact correlate to the culture of connectivity discussed by Van Dijck.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time social media encourages us to gain the approval from other users through likes, shares and followers in order to keep up to date with what is relevant. By constantly comparing ourselves to other users through keeping up to date with everyone’s profiles, we are actually taking part of the neoliberal economy suggested. By receiving more followers, shares and likes we are encouraged to continue posting photos, statuses etc. Someone like Essena O’Neil is who ‘average’ users would compare their likes and followers to and being in competition with an individual like this is what keeps social media going. Essena correlates the neoliberal model by introducing to the public through her viral ‘quitting social media’ video that the ultimate prize of all of these likes, shares and follows are actually worth nothing in life and calls out celebrities by stating that they are also fake. Van Dijck’s conceptualization of neoliberal economic principles refers to how platforms such as Instagram are used specifically to spread “competition and power through strategic alliances” (Van Dijck 21). This is explicitly demonstrated through Essena’s story as her experiences with social media demonstrates how her fake lifestyle was used in attempt to gain social power. Lastly, I have seen first hand and I’m sure many of us know that social media has influenced users to believe that however many likes received or followers one has, connects to how much power and success an individual equates to.