This reveals another aspect about our youth culture which links to the need to be ‘perfect’: the need to be seen and appreciated.
O’Neill talks about the amount of followers she has and her growing popularity as a source of comfort: ‘the only time I felt better about myself, really, was the more followers, the more likes, the more praise, and the more views I got online’. Her popularity became an affirmation of her success in achieving ‘perfection’ and so she began to crave more to boost her self-confidence and avoid her depression. The important distinction that needs to be made here is that O’Neill was not blaming social media as the reason for her unhappiness, but rather she was criticising the culture of todays youth that prioritises both physical appearance and how we appear socially to others, acknowledging that she herself had succumbed to this behaviour.
In this instance, social media is merely a consumerist tool used to expand the range of people we can connect to online - the amount of people who can appreciate our perfection.
"We are a generation told to consume and consume, with no thought of where it all comes from and where it all goes"
Millennials.