My One Piece of Advice to Anyone Online

          Since the moment I got my iPhone 7 in sixth grade, I have had Instagram. When I first downloaded the app, I felt super mature and older than my age (my actual age since I pretended to be 13 to bypass the app’s security protocols). On Instagram, I was exposed to all corners of the internet, makeup tutorials, vlogs, political pages, and my favorites, ‘niche memes’ and self-help accounts.

         I followed countless accounts dedicated to inspiring you to ‘be your best self’ and be more confident in your self, all posted by influencers with photoshop and face tune, which I failed to notice. These accounts were so integral to my middle school years and I was convinced that if I dunked my face in ice water like the influencers online, my pimples would magically go away and I’d be cured of sleepiness in the morning. I would stay up late watching YouTube videos of attractive, skinny influencers and write notes on how to mimic their routines. Videos like ‘what I eat in a day’ and ‘my school day morning routine’ inspired me to try 5-minute cold showers, intermittent fasting, only drinking lemon water, and other ridiculous things.

         I was so certain that these things were positively changing my life, that in 7^th grade, my friends and I created our own self-help account on Instagram. We would post some random tips we found online, or a photo we stole from Pinterest as ‘inspo’. We were 12, and we were idiots, posting ‘how to change your life in five days’ all while our ideas were taken from other people online. We had zero evidence anything that we posted worked. We would also post about fashion inspo and school advice, when we were middle schoolers in pre-algebra and probably still wearing justice that our moms bought us. Eventually, as our account evolved, we would begin posting ‘aesthetic’ niche memes, which were really just glorified picture collages.

         So, if there is one piece of advice that I know, for sure, is 100% true: Do not take advice from influencers!

         I was a tween cosplaying as an influencer and telling almost 3000 Instagram followers (more followers than I have now) that drinking hot lemon water immediately in the morning will detox your gut and fix your metabolism. Whether that is true, I still don’t know, nor do I even know what detoxing your gut means. But what I do know is that I was saying and posting whatever would get me views. And the worst part... I continued to post stupid advice like that with my friends for a full year. I can’t even remember why we stopped, but once we entered 8^th grade, it was like our brains started to develop and realized we had no business being self-help gurus. Maybe even worse, although I stopped posting self-help, I still continued to follow similar self-help accounts.

         As I entered high school and my social media addiction shifted from Instagram to TikTok, a whole new side of the internet was introduced to me. Watching these short videos, I started to become jealous of other young and pretty girls. I felt jealous of their beauty, their wealth, their free PR and their perfect boyfriend who just also happened to be beautiful and famous online. I watched their ‘get ready with me’s' and hauls, and I wanted to emulate their styles and makeup in hopes to be just as beautiful and liked as them. I imagined setting up my newest iPhone against a gold, ornate mirror, confidently, like I was born for this and talking to my own reflection on camera, explaining my every thought while applying foundation, then concealer, then mascara. I’d discuss the small activities I did before, all of which were incredibly cool and niche, and of course, my followers would eat it up in the comments. Suddenly, the visions of my future became so warped that the body I inhabited wasn't my own. In my head I believed I was seeing myself 20 pounds skinner, with tight skin and clothes that showed off my toned, small body. However, I began to realize that the girl I imagined as myself looked nothing like me. Her eyes were pointier, like by Bella Hadid, her waist was tiny, like Kylie Jenner, and her nose was completely different, probably created by whatever imaginary plastic surgeon my fake persona went to. My imaginary self-had almost zero similarities to my real body.

         But just as you would imagine, that was not healthy for a teenage girl’s mental health. I felt uncomfortable in my body and my skin, and I wanted to be someone else completely. The body in my mind did not match the body in my mirror, and eventually, it became hard to look at myself.

         Then, one day, maybe my senior year of high school, I was scrolling along my for you page. Once again, my feed was filled with beautiful girls doing their makeup and showing off their expensive outfits. In the twin sized bed of my childhood room, I came across a video from another young girl. She was just a random girl, but what she said has stuck with me for years. Looking into the camera she explained her own epiphany of realizing that influencers are not your friends. At first when I watched it, the TikTok wasn’t life changing. The video was short and it quickly just became another small wave in the flood of my doomscroll, but the video did stay in the back of my mind.

         Weeks went on and I continued watching influencers rave about a specific skincare product, but then, I would realize, they have Botox and filler. It reminded me of the trend in 2020, when influencers would admit to random fads and products they promoted, to the voice of Coco Jones saying, “and you would do it too for a check.” I realized it was stupid to compare my 17-year-old body to Alix Earle, who was in college at the time and had openly discussed the plastic surgery she received in the past. I also began to realize that I literally just don’t know these people. They are not my friends; they cannot give me personalized advice and tips. Just because Hailey Bieber said, ‘you need to get this lip product’, does not mean that I, a high schooler in Pennsylvania, needed to get that lip product.

         So, if I could give one piece of advice to anyone living in this digital world, it would be to not listen to advice from people on the internet, which I know is a bit counterintuitive because I am a stranger giving advice on the internet, and I have also listened to stranger's advice on the internet. But I am also a hypocrite, so only listen to me this one time. If an influencer tries to tell you to buy a product, they are probably getting paid to say that and they also probably don’t even use it themselves. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt, even this article. So, if you’ll listen to one thing only, listen to this: do not listen to influencers.