At present, due to the proliferation of media, the number of online influencers is increasing rapidly. Those people who are well known because of their actions that could influence someone are called ‘influencers’. In addition, there are many kinds of actions and lifestyles that make them role models for youngsters. In this blog post, the information, benefits, drawbacks, and examples of platforms, examples of the influencer, and also the narrator’s opinion, will be examined.
Meaning of influencer
‘Influencers’ are difficult to describe succinctly because there are so many of them and each person takes a completely different approach. They use a variety of platforms to post their lifestyle and daily life for their followers to see, such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. These people are called influencers because they have the power to persuade people to pay attention to what they are trying to convey. Whether those people have quite similar lifestyles, although it is impossible for them to be exactly the same, the followers will choose who to follow based on their lifestyle preferences.
Positive sides
Starting with the advantages of teenagers taking influencers as examples to improve their lives, There are a variety of beneficial aspects associated with the action of following and adapting the influencer’s lifestyle to one’s daily routine. First and foremost, the most relevant one is that teens will be healthier. This is due to the fact that teenagers usually follow those they like on social media. Some of the youngsters have a goal to be healthier or some want to get in shape, so they follow influencers who eat healthily and are keen on working out. As a result, when the influencer posts their activities, such as going to the gym, having a balanced diet, or even sleeping enough, the followers will take it as inspiration to motivate themselves. To illustrate, when a girl who normally does not exercise at all sees her idol post an Instagram story in the gym regularly, she might get interested and start following her idol’s activity.
Another advantage is that adolescents will receive information from people around their age. This is because sometimes age differences can also lead to misunderstandings between generations. For instance, some families may reprimand the youngster and assert that a child’s age shouldn’t interfere with love, so this could lead to the teen’s secret which might cause many problems because those kids do not have parents to consult with or see as a good example or to ask for advice. If an incident like this occurs, influencers are at least one of the role models that teenagers can look up to and perhaps approach for advice. Not only about the general things in daily life, but the influencer also helps with learning. In every country, there are many influencers who can give advice on studying. For example, when teenagers want to know information about the faculty before they attempt in, watching the influencer video about the faculty will help them to gain more information from people who lives in those environments. This is an example of a video in that the influencer talks about her faculty.
Negative sides
Nevertheless, there are several detrimental aspects of teenagers following the influencer’s activities as well. First of all, the most important one is the problem of disappointment, which is due to the fact that some adolescents compare themselves to the influencers on social media. This happens because some youngsters follow the influencers that are good-looking or skinny, and then when they look at the pictures of those influencers, some kids want to look like them, which may lead to the problem of teens comparing themselves with the people they are following. As a result, some of the kids will be stressed and disappointed with themselves because they think they can’t look like or be prettier than those influencers. In spite of the fact that everyone is beautiful and handsome in their own way, there is no need to compare yourself to anyone else. This is the main problem with teenagers becoming too attached to internet influencers.
Not only is there a disappointment problem, but there is also a financial problem. The reason for this is that many families do not have enough income to afford everything that their offspring ask for. As a result, this can cause children to feel sad and stressed out because they are disappointed that they do not have enough money to buy those things like others. Some children may blame their parents for their problems and cause problems in the house. Last but not least, due to the advancement of technology nowadays, media is easily accessible to people of all ages. Children and teenagers are among those too, which can create serious problems for both those adolescents and society. This is because some parents do not have enough time or do not care enough to control their offspring’s media use. Causing this issue that teens may come across inappropriate media and still not have enough discretion to distinguish right from wrong behavior, causing some of them to imitate behavior from the media and do it in real life, whether they know that those actions are right or wrong. For instance, some teenagers watch a content video from TikTok about how to lose weight by doing calorie deficits, but she misunderstands the concept of it and does it in the wrong way by eating as little as they can, so this action could lead to an eating disorder and the need to recover in the future.
Social media platforms
Moving on to the platforms influencer use, there are many social media platforms that influencers use to influence people, especially teenagers. Here are some examples of good influences from many kinds of lifestyles.
Firstly, these are examples of influencers on the YouTube platform.
Chloe Ting is a health influencer who has over 24.4 million followers on her YouTube channel. Chloe is famous because of her workout challenge videos and healthy food recipes. Lots of people give reviews under most of her videos, saying that after following her method they successfully achieved their goal.
Linda Sun is a health influencer who has around 960K followers on her Youtube channel. Most dieters suffer from stress and a fear of food. Because of the fear that eating food will make you fat, avoid eating things that you used to like; this action may cause malnutrition due to insufficient nutrients. This is what usually happens when adolescents lose weight, they are stressed. This refers to me, who used to be afraid of eating and was keen on dieting and doing calorie deficits in 2021. After watching Linda’s clip, it made me feel less scared of food. I learned that it is not wrong to eat what you like as much as you like and that you should exercise for your health. Linda’s videos give me so much positive energy.
Secondly, this is an example of an influencer in the TikTok platform.
This girl is Charli D’Amelio. She has about 150,150,000 followers on her TikTok account. In the past, she was just an ordinary girl, but after she posted dance videos on TikTok in 2019, she became famous. This gave her the opportunity to work in various entertainment industries, such as being a hostess for social events and a hostess for TV shows. Now she has her own show, and her own perfume line, and worked with many famous brands such as Prada. Many of her followers are inspired by her and want to achieve success like her.
Thirdly, this is an example of an influencer on the Instagram platform.
Koen Danai has about 932K followers on his Instagram account. He used to be a member of a boy band and he is still active in the industry but what makes him an influencer is that he is a queer who encourages everyone to dress up and express themselves happily without feeling guilty or weird because of their sexual orientation. He is also a Psychotherapist, his latest project is to randomly go somewhere with a sign that says anyone who feels uncomfortable or has stress can consult with him for free without any charge. This activity will be held every week and the secrets of those who come to talk with him will not be leaked at all.
I hold the view that influencers are having much impact on teenagers nowadays which can lead to both positive and negative sides. I believe the pros outweigh the cons as it can inspire, encourage and drive self-improvement for many young people. Sometimes, information from the general internet may not be enough to meet the needs of teenagers. Following influencers may be one of the learning aids for teens. However, the use of online media still has limitations and disadvantages as well. Parents with children under the age of twenty should monitor and advise their children on what is appropriate and what is not appropriate for those online activities because some children are not mature enough to distinguish the actions.
