A Rapunzel in a digital prison
for 31⁄2 years. That is the authentic voice of the workaholic. She is ‘‘working’’ on her happiness: ‘‘I definitely beat myself up about it more now than I used to. I get frustrated and feel deflated.’’ I am not cynical enough to believe she said this for hits. I believe her.
‘‘One of the biggest issues most people face when dealing with mental health issues is the internet,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s a cure, but it’s also a curse.’’
The cure is like-minded people, who feel as she does, and can support her; except no-one feels as she does, except perhaps the No 1 person on that rich list. So, who can support her? She is alone in her pixelated castle with her handsome vlogger prince.
The curse is that these like-minded people might as well be fictional. Zoella’s 10.7m Instagram followers are not her friends, even if they admire her prettiness and taste. It would be more accurate to say they are consuming her.
Zoella’s whole brand is based on a warped ideal of friendship. Here she is, in her familiar house, which her followers know but have not visited, smiling brightly and confiding in them. She is an ideal friend – a 12-year-old’s idea of a beauty – but she’s not a real one. Nourish yourself online and what is left in the real world?
Not a lot, which is why anxiety in the young is spiking. They have a lot to worry about. Friendships could ease it, but possibly not ones like this. ‘‘We are a generation of scrollers and we consume so much on the internet that we probably don’t realise how much of it is detrimental to us or our well-being,’’ she says.
She is right, and why wouldn’t she be? This is what she knows, because it is her job to sate the hunger she has created. There isn’t much data yet on exactly how the internet is destroying our mental health, but any avid user with any selfawareness could tell you it makes you feel insane.
I could barely settle down to write this column for shouting at people on Twitter. We will know soon how the whirligig of the internet is affecting us, and the post-Zoella generation may well burn their smartphones.
I don’t care about her blusher tips, or where she drank tea, or what kind of tea it was, but this post of hers felt truthful. It is hard to interpret it as anything other than a cry for release from inside her digital prison. It remains to be seen whether she will join in the swell of support for scroll-free September.
Until then, I am sure, it will be a case of back to sell, sell, sell. – Telegraph Group