Before today, had you ever heard of Essena O'Neill?
Me neither.
Well, apparently we're a little behind the times.
Essena, a 19-year old Australian model and social media personality, has hundreds of thousands of followers on the likes of YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr. (She also seems to have a number of Facebook pages, but since the 'book of face' is quickly becoming more of a midlife community, her numbers there aren't quite as staggering.)
For the past few years, Essena has spent countless hours posing and posting. Blonde with a preternaturally tiny waist, she's perfected the swimsuit selfie. You know, that pose that says "Just puttin' myself out there because I'm so hot. So hot. You know I'm so hot. But yo, if you don't know, well now you know."
Her online popularity has led to a modeling contract with a major ("the biggest") agency down under, as well as advertising revenue and product endorsements.
By her own account, she is a product of — and addicted to — social media. When she was 12, she began posting and thought she was worthless because she had no likes or followers. For years, she perfected her pretty pouts, sometimes shooting an image 100 times before it was deemed attractive enough to get the reaction she was looking for. Now, at the wise old age of 18 (and after 3 years of pretty much living online), she knows better. "Validation from numbers? It means nothing," she insists.
Recently, Essena stunned the interwebcyberdigisphere by publicly resigning. She explained why she's not going to post anymore in a video (that she posted, of course). "I don't agree with social media as it currently is. It's so detrimental to human health and human abilities."
Wow. Profoundy.
To add cred to her cause, she made the video without makeup ("Gasp!"), a fancy blow-out ("Oh my!") or even a bikini ("Say it ain't so!").
She's challenging her fans to swear off social media for a week. If they do, she promises they can have life-altering (she really uses that phrase) experiences just like she has. For example, she's spent her newfound offline time "Looking at trees." And, "Listening to people."
With due respect to Kafka, Essena is clearly going through a metamorphosis. And, she's going to share it with us. In fact, she'll be posting about her life post-posting 3 times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. ("Australia-time.") She'll talk about books she's reading, what she's doing, "game-changing projects and plans." Her focus won't be on how she looks but how she feels "insiiiiiiide." She caresses the word with a sense of wonder, as though she were the first to coin the concept.
So, Essena has launched a new "Game Changers" blog where she is — through the use of social media — encouraging people to turn away from social media. "Let's talk about real stuff!" After a couple of days of jubilant observations and tearful gratitude, she realized that her new venture, as noble as it was, wouldn't pay her rent. So she posted a video asking for donations and added a "Support" tab to the site where you can demonstrate said support with a major credit card. This was picked up by the media and opened her to a veritable hailstorm of cynics and detractors. (The plea has since been taken down.)
But, crowdsourcing aside, she insists that her new venture is "Not about likes; not about money."
In fact, she boasts in her initial video, "I almost took this off YouTube."
But ya didn't. Did ya?
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
I still remember my first sleepover party. It was thrilling. I had a Girl Scout sleeping bag; I was eleven years old. It was my best friend's birthday and she took a bunch of us to see American Graffiti, most of which, I'm sure, went right over our heads. Then we camped out in the living room of her sprawling upper westside apartment. Between the hardwood floor, the gaggle of giggling girls and the novelty of not being in my own bed, I don't think I slept much.
There were also the cats. I'm desperately allergic, have been since I was tiny. My friend had not one, not two, but three felines. Two orange tabbies and an enormous Persian. So, I went home the next morning sleep-deprived and sneezing, itching and wheezing, and with eyes swollen shut.
I couldn't wait to sleepover again.
For a preteen girl, sleepovers were pretty much the best of the best. As I grew into my teens, I continued to attend (and sometimes host) slumber parties. Lots of them. They fell away once I went to college, of course ("sleeping over" meant something completely different at that point). But, sleepovers will always be an important right of passage in my tween and teen memory.
For my own teenage daughter? Not so much.
She and her cohorts had slumber parties earlier than we did. She was still in preschool I think when a friend had what her parents billed as a "sleepover/half-sleepover" party. The girls all wore pajamas and the more confident ones stayed over while others were picked up by parents mid-celebration.
When she turned seven, my daughter had a "Superstar" makeover-sleepover. Two of her teenage cousins (who were considered cool beyond belief by the guest set) joined us for hair and makeup, manis and pedis. A couple of years later, we hosted another sleepover, this one revolving around her favorite TV show The Saddle Club. We covered the dining room floor in bales of clean hay (to this day, nearly a decade later, we still find the odd bit of straw in the cracks of the floor). Fun was had by all.
Now a junior in high school, my daughter and her friends don't seem interested in sleeping over anymore. In fact, she's competing in a big horse event next week with another rider (and BFF). I suggested, you guessed it, a sleepover. To her credit, my daughter didn't roll her eyes or audibly sigh. But, she politely — and quickly — declined.
Why have sleepovers gone away? Why would an otherwise normal, healthy, red-blooded American teen not want to be up all night gossiping with her gal pals? Looking at pictures of Hollywood heartthrobs, making crank phone calls, participating in seances and eating junk food?
Waitaminute.
That's exactly what they are doing. It's just that mobile and digital technology allow them to be together ... apart. They are pretty much having remote slumber parties every night. They can Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook. They can Skype or FaceTime or LiveChat. They can group message, share pictures, flirt, tease, post videos.
We insist that my daughter leave her iPhone in the kitchen every night. It's one of the last vestiges of the rules we used to successfully enforce. (Oh, and if you ask her, it's m-o-r-t-i-f-y-i-n-g!!!!!!!) First of all, we leave ours down there too. Second, if we didn't have this rule, she would get even less sleep than she currently does.
And third, "Because I'm your mother, that's why!"
On the rare occasion that she goes to bed before I do, I can sometimes hear messages pinging through to her phone. Pretty much all night.
Hey, I was a teenager too once. It was the 1970s, which certainly may (which certainly does!) sound like ancient history. But, I'm glad I didn't have to deal with cyber bullying, texting or sexting when I was a teen. I'm glad I wasn't under the kind of pressure that high school juniors and seniors have to live with.
Most of all, I'm glad I got to go to sleepovers.
Cats and all.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
Y'know how everyone is a perfect parent ... until they actually are a parent? When we were "dinks" (dual-income, no kids), my husband and I found it very easy to pass judgement on our friends who had already taken the parental plunge. We would never let our toddler eat junk food between meals. We would never be bullied into anything by a six-year old. We would never let our fifth grader wear something like that to school.
We would never let our teenager have unlimited access to iPhone apps.
Actually, that last one wasn't on our mind at all. Our friends who had children five and ten years before us didn't face the same challenges we do where personal electronics are concerned. Sure they had PCs, but the whole smartphone thing is a fairly new phenomenon. And one that makes it fairly difficult (read, impossible) to assert any kind of authority or control.
There was a time (not so long ago) when I was feeling rather self-satisfied that my teen daughter and I were Facebook friends. Let me tell you ... Facebook is so yesterday! Sure, my daughter is still on Facebook (you sort of have to be), but her activity there is fairly superficial: sharing photos from horse events, wishing people "Happy Birthday." Her real life (well, her real digital life) takes place elsewhere.
Here are some of the latest apps that have replaced Facebook in terms of teen activity. If you don't know them, don't worry, your kids do.
Oh wait, strike that. If you don't know them, your kids do. Go ahead and worry.
Snapchat
Kids can post pictures that then "disappear." In theory, this makes the app safer than a more permanent place like Facebook. In reality, it encourages otherwise cautious kids to experiment with sexting and bullying. And, guess what? Nothing on the Internet ever really goes away.
Burn Note
This one's the same premise as Snapchat but with text messages instead of pictures. Same benefits. Same issues.
Kik
A popular messaging app with 120 million (MILLION!) users, Kik "lets you connect with all your friends, no matter how you meet them – at school, on your favorite social app, or in an online game." Your username can be whatever you like, which encourages anonymity (and all the questionable behavior that tags along with it). Since no one knows who you really are, it's a great place for pedophiles. Bonus!
Ask.fm
Another anonymous site (do we see a pattern emerging?), Ask.fm lets users post questions and answers. Great for sharing information, right? Great also for bullying, unfortunately. Although the site is based in Latvia, it's very popular with teens in the U.K. And, sadly, there have been several suicides there linked to it.
Yik Yak
Another anonymous site (yes, definitely a pattern), Yik Yak is in some ways even worse because it geotargets users. You see comments posted by people in your own community — in most cases, your high school. This "local bulletin board" brings the bullying right into your backyard.
I've just scratched the surface here. There are so many others (and, sadly, more being developed every day). Vine, Wanelo, Oovoo, Tumblr, Omegle, Pheed, Instagram, Whisper, Speak Freely, the list goes on and on.
If you have the wherewithal, ask your daughter or son to give you a tour of their smartphone. Then again, if they know you're coming, they can easily hide any apps they don't want you to see. In fact, there's an app for that. It's called ...
Poof.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
