The toxicity of influencer culture

Opinion Piece by Tala Al Otaibi, Staff Writer

June 7th, 2020

What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Chances are, it is checking your phone.

Today, we are very engaged in the technology that surrounds us. It is incorporated into so many aspects of our lives. The development of technology has been used for so many things, both good and bad. Simply put, without technology, you would not be able to read this article right now.

Without technology, many privileges you currently enjoy would not be available. Your life would not be as easily lived as it is now. However, technology has its downsides. With technology came the birth of weaponry used by terrorists today. Cyberbullying became a prevalent phenomenon. As with everything surrounding us in our lives, technology has its advantages and disadvantages.

Social media platforms are used by millions of users worldwide on a daily basis. We use them to keep in touch with family, friends, world news, etc. With the help of social media platforms, businesses have risen and promoted themselves. Hence, social media is used for far more than just ‘personal’ reasons. In recent years, “influencers” have grown in number on social media platforms.

Influencers work to – as the name suggests – influence their viewers to do a particular something or buy a particular product. Influencers started working to help promote products to their followers and incentivize them to buy those very products. Hence, they are considered to be “popular” on social media and have many more followers than the ‘average’ person. Most often, they may promote products related to fashion, fitness, health, or cosmetics for a financial reward given by the company/business they are promoting. 

With following influencers comes a promotion of a specific consumeristic lifestyle. Influencers promote, besides the products, the need to live and look a certain way. It brings about the idea that we must abide by these ways in order to be accepted into society. Should we be in violation of these ‘expectations’, we are immediately assumed to be inferior and, in some cases, incompetent. With the impact of these influencers over the years, young girls and boys have been driven to look a certain way. They have been driven to achieve an influencer’s idea of a “perfect” body. Girls are expected to be skinny, wear branded clothes, carry designer bags, have perfect hair, and have big lips. Boys are expected to have broad shoulders, six packs, be athletic in nature, and also have the perfect hair.

The harsh truth is that that does no good to society. It has many long-term impacts related to a sense of identity. Young girls and boys will grow into believing that they are ‘not good enough’ no matter what they do. Nevertheless, influencers do work very hard to keep up a positive and happy self-image. In reality, their lives are not as perfect as they seem. It is all part of their social image illusion. Their lifestyle promotes a very unrealistic sense of reality. When their followers see this all the time on their page, it impacts their mental health in a more negative manner. It brings a person to draw comparisons as to how they should be living and feeling every single day. 

If influencers can impact our lives to this extent, this brings about the next question: to what extent are they willing to go? Money is a grand incentive for these influencers. A lot of the times, they might not really care about what they are promoting as long as it brings them good money. What if they were to promote products sold by companies that violate ethics? What if they promoted products for a certain political goal?

The truth is, influencers have a lot of power today and there is no denying that. Influencers may very easily impact the way we think about culture, tradition, and morals. Human beings have a flexibility to change mindsets. With long-term exposure to the life of influencers, we may very well be driven to live and think the same way they do. We might fall into traps of supporting causes we never thought we would.

Influencers may be very easily used to promote dangerous ideologies if incentivized by the right group of people. In that sense, there needs to be a strong sense of awareness among people when using their social media on a daily basis. It remains quite important to hang on to our sense of self in order to continue living on peacefully and trouble-free.