By now you’ve probably heard of 18 year old instagram star Essena O’Neill–That is if you’ve had your ear to the ground. The teen announced this week that she was deleting her instagram account  of over 600,000 followers after claiming that the posts she claims took hundreds of shots to get and clothes she was paid to wear were all so fake. So why not stand behind this righteous teenager who is making the claim of being true to yourself?

Because with every “brave attempt” comes a counter fire.

Teens across the board are calling out the “brave attempt” and claiming that social media should always have been about being yourself. Shortly after O’Neill’s announcement, popular instagram account SocalityBarbie quit the race as well. For those unfamiliar, Socality Barbie was an account that used a Barbie doll to poke fun at the way that some people take instagram way too seriously. The account decided to discontinue posting, with the message that their job had been done. Which brings me to wonder when did social media become anything other than sharing a group pic of your friends with your Aunt you only see at Christmas, or sharing a pic of you hard at work with your friends from high school?

The bottom line: social media is what we make of it.

I’m a teen who grew up in the age where every social media platform was born, from MySpace to SnapChat. As a teen who lived through when Facebook was cool, then it wasn’t cool because everyone’s parents had one, to when it was cool again, I can attest to that social media should be about you. Just, the real you. Like the you that you are when you hang out with your friends.

Social media is openly another platform that gives us standards– That we didn’t necessarily ask for– to live by. We already have TV, movies, magazines, and models that create a standard. So why take something that is intended for fun, and make it as criminal as the standards already handed to us by society?

Social media is arguably fake. But it doesn’t have to be. Many accounts with millions of followers are endorsed by companies and people buy and sell accounts to get more followers. However, this shouldn’t stop you from posting what you want.