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29 March 2024

Life in mess for this bombshell after quitting social media

19-year-old model claims to have been offered thousands by companies for advertising promotions. (Instagram)

Published
By Lifestyle Correspondent

Queensland model Essena O'Neill quits Instagram after tearful admission she'd deceived her half a million followers and this announcement generated maddening coverage.

O'Neill uploaded a 17-minute-long video to YouTube - now deleted - and told her tens of thousands of subscribers why she had decided to leave behind the world of Instagram, Tumblr and Snapchat.

Screen grab

Model sensationally quit social media while exposing the 'dark truth' behind Instafame, revealing how she was paid to promote products online and would often 'hardly eat all day' to appear flawless in her snaps.

In the video she admitted she had done nothing to deserve her fame and begged her hundreds of thousands of social media followers not to be 'deluded' by what they saw.

"What I'm doing scares the absolute **** out of me," she said in the video.

"I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what's going to happen next, I have no idea how I'm going to make money."

Instagram

Ms O'Neill then suggested fans who wanted to support her could visit a support page on her website.

"I can't afford rent right now," she said.

"It's like I'm just embarrassed to admit that I need help ... if you like my videos or like any of my posts or you like this website, if this is of value to you, then yeah, please support me because I can't afford my own real life."

Instagram

But in a tearful second video posted on her new website, letsbegamechangers.com, O'Neill admits that after abandoning her 'whole career built around social media', she was now struggling to make ends meet.

The Instagram star — who will turn 19 this week — created this website 'Let's Be Game Changers' to explain her decision and to shed light on the fantasy world of social media.

Instagram

"And yes, I quit all of social media. With 570,00+ followers on Instagram, 250,000+ subscribes on YouTube, 250,000+ on tumblr and 60,000+ average views on snapchat. Tumblr and Snapchat gone forever. My instagram left to expose the harsh and often humorous reality behind the #goals #instafamous culture and YouTube for purely vegan education. Deleting all those apps from my phone was one of the most empowering and freeing thing I have ever done," she explains on her website.

Before deleting her account she had edited the captions of her photos and debunked the myth that many of her photos were 'unreal', in fact she were paid for by various companies to promote their merchandise.

Screen grab

The teenager has earned praise for her bold stance against fake insta fame.

But others have accused Ms O'Neill of trying to get a second bite of the cherry from her Instagram fame and cleverly re-marketing herself.

Her statement that 'social media is not real life' has sparked more debate than anything else. A string of Insta-stars are now speaking out on the issue through their own online forums.

Instagram stars Gabrielle Epstein, Kurt Coleman, Jessica Grossman and social media CEO Zack James have weighed in on the debate and spoken out in defense of their chosen platform.