The perfect ( but not so real) life — on Instagram

Genuine love better than a million likes

Eighteen- year- old Australian Essena O’Neill had a great body, beautiful clothes and hundreds of thousands of fans. She had it all — but only on Instagram.

“Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real,” she wrote on the photo- sharing social media site last week.

O’Neill, who is now calling for people to get off social media for a week, has overhauled her Instagram presence, deleting many photos and adding details to others. “Didn’t pay for the dress … the formal made me feel incredibly alone,” she wrote on the photo of her in a gown. On an image of her face, she wrote, “I had acne ... a lot of makeup.” On a bikini photo, she admitted, “Not real life — took over 100 ( photos) trying to make my stomach look good.”

O’Neill, with 600,000 Instagram followers, is not your typical teen, but her former approach to social media was. A CNN study on teens’ use of social media released last month found that “the heaviest social media users admitted to checking their social media feeds more than 100 times a day,” and that 61% “wanted to see if their online posts are getting likes and comments.”

But are we chasing the best life when we chase social media accolades? Consider the tragic story of Madison Holleran, a 19- yearold track star who committed suicide an hour after posting a beautiful image of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square at twilight.

“She seemed acutely aware that the life she was curating online was distinctly different from the one she was actually living,” wrote Kate Fagan on ESPN. com. “Yet she could not apply that same logic when she looked at the projected lives of others.”

Holleran’s isn’t an isolated case. A 2011 Utah Valley University study found that among undergrads, “those spending more time on Facebook each week agreed more that others were happier and had better lives.”

That suggests O’Neill’s story — and those of other social media stars — is doubly tragic, hurting both the star and the fans.

But perhaps the tide is shifting. Twitter is struggling, with stagnant usership. Actress Kate Winslet recently told The ( London) Sunday Times that she restricts her children’s access to social media, saying, “It has a huge impact on ... women’s self- esteem.”

In contrast to O’Neill’s story is a viral post about a man who emailed boudoir photographer Victoria Haltom to complain that photos airbrushing his wife’s stretch marks and wrinkles away obliterated evidence of the couple’s shared lives.

Of course, if unedited photos of his wife had been posted online, she would have been mocked or ignored. But her husband’s reaction shows a truth about relationships: with shared lives comes genuine love that “filters” better than any Instagram option.

As O’Neill said after her story went viral, “Nothing is perfect about spending every ... day making your life look perfect online.”

Katrina Trinko, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, is managing editor for The Daily Signal.