It’s what every girl imagines, you grow your social media following to 500,ooo followers; and all those days of waiting to eat until after you’ve snapped the perfect pic, buying clothes you don’t need (that you wear once) because they’ll photograph well, and spending time with your friends only to have your face buried in a phone have finally paid off. You’ve made it to the pinnacle of Instagram, brands are paying you to wear their clothes, and you are getting told day in and day out how gorgeous you are.

Image from instagram.com/essenaoneill

If you have been working hard to achieve this, you now get to hear first hand from the instagram model who had ‘it all’, and still felt empty. She was brave enough to share with the whole world that the money, the fame and the constant stream on compliments only forced her to feel more and more alone, and she doesn’t want you to spend your youth doing the same. Chasing money from brands, paying her to encourage you to chase an unfulfilling life of buying clothes you don’t need started to get to her.

If you haven’t yet seen, Instagram Model Essena O’Neill called it quits on social media this week and she’s encouraging you to as well on her website wearegamechangers.com where she encourages you to have a healthy view of yourself, stop being a follower and start being a leader.

We applaud Essena for calling it quits. If you’re weary about doing the same, here are some tips to make your time spent on social media less frequent and smarter:

1. Spend less than 20 minutes a day

We can all admit to spending 2 hours on social media. Some of us even spend that much on it a day, and with someone who had a career on social media, like Essena, she was definitely spending much more than that.

So let’s do a quick caculation: Imagine you spend 2 hours a day on social media:

2 hours/day x 365 days in a year= 730 minutes

Divide that by 24, yep, thats 1 MONTH of your life staring into your iPhone screen…

Imagine what you could do with an extra month added on to your year if you quit social media! Start writing that blog you’ve been dreaming of, catch up with your family, pick up a new hobby or passion!

Limit your time on socials and get out and do the things that you’ve been wanting to do. Heck, I built this website in less than a month, started to write posts on things that interest me, pursued my love of photography, and inspired others to do the same. How would you rather spend your time?

2. Value the People Around You

I can get a ton of new followers, I can get a ton of likes on a photo, but the thing that really makes me happy is when I see that I inspired someone to go after their goals with yes supply and made a real difference in their lives, not just encouraged them to buy something new.

The times I feel the best is when I’m inspired by the people that I love, having a genuine real conversation, and being raw, not worried that someone is going to post something embarrassing that I might have said on twitter.

We get the most happiness out of like when we are our true selves, not trying to pretend and attain some fake ideals of perfection.

3. Being “Pretty” is not important.

Plain and simple. I know people who are society’s ‘ideal’ of pretty and they are to the bone cold, depressed, and empty feeling. I know people who could care less about achieving these standards and are the happiest people you met, have a strong group of friends, wonderful relationships, and finances in order. Which of these people would you rather be?

4. Minimalism is key

It’s not quantity but quality, especially when it comes to material goods. We’re forced to believe that we need a closet filled with clothes, like Cher from Clueless; but how many times have we purchased something, only to wear once, or twice, or even a season, to never look at it again.

Your wallet, and your sanity will thank you. I used to work in retail, and the allure of purchasing something every shift, especially when you saw someone else (real or on IG) looking amazing in it, was very real. But I’m proud to say that by saying no to unnecessary purchases, I was able to say yes to making some of the most important purchased in my life. After being raised in a single-parent household, with not a single dollar handed to me to help pay for my phone, car, rent, school and all the other things that ‘lucky’ kids get, I was able to buy my second condo, and achieve my dream of having a tenant and working towards financial freedom

The marketing and advertising companies on Instagram do not want you to realize you can achieve happiness without purchasing every item, from every season of their collection.

Let us know in the comments: Have you ever wanted to quit social media?