Social Media: It’s Like A Fake Reality TV Show, And You Are The Star…
In the past, the initial purpose of social media was to connect family and friends across various networks using personal platforms (source). The enjoyable social tools were created with the intent for users to share posts, engage with their friends and scroll through photos and videos of interest. Essentially, a photo gallery such as Instagram, or a collection of thoughts to be shared publicly.
Today, the average user has become enlightened by the fact that social media can serve as more than the use of social sharing. Aside from celebrities who use their strong PR to market their established brand, ordinary people have become obsessed with discovering new approaches in capitalizing on social media. That is to say, the average ‘Joe’ has been using tactics to gain a large user following with high hopes of becoming a social media influencer. Types of influencers may be; bloggers, makeup gurus, activists, models, experts in their craft, you name it… someone is already capitalizing on their skill (source).
Seeing that social media platforms — Instagram being the most relevant example — are evolving, it has raised many issues around the topics of the creator’s self-worth. Solely from the content creators perspective, we will discuss how social media metrics have been affecting these three topics: a sense of self-worth, the perception of value and potential societal consequences.
Whether the average user plans to become an influencer, or one has an established online presence already; it is imperative to stay #WOKE, and be aware of the effects of this evolving social media era.
How Much Do You Think You’re Worth?
Often, when an individual of such calibre is active on social media, the goal in mind is to continuously increase fan-base, followers, promotion and engagement. At this point, social media metrics become an important evaluation to pursue. When analyzing these metrics, it is important to differentiate vanity metrics and actionable metrics. Vanity metrics can serve as website traffic or Facebook likes,— they can have potential to be actionable — but doesn’t really benefit the brand (source). Whereas, actionable metrics measure how a specific task can aid in action-taking for the brand. Now that there is an understanding of both metrics, we can now discuss how they don’t positively contribute to a healthy self-worth or self-esteem.
Self-Worth
Measuring social media metrics properly (meaning, not being fooled by vanity metrics) is a useful approach in measuring the success of a brand; however, obsessing over the analytics can be detrimental to one’s self-worth. With the need to manage these analytics signifies a larger audience, that means more haters. Influencers are exposed to bullying/hateful comments, self-doubt, low self-esteem, and can become obsessed with their online persona. In this case, it is difficult for an influencer to find their self-worth if they are seeking validation from their followers (once again, an example of vanity metrics).
Famous YouTuber, Jackie Hill spoke about her early days when she had a smaller follower-base. She was able to be more authentic and connect with her loyal viewers with ease. However, as her fame rose, negativity began to flock her page (source). She mentioned that it’s difficult to find your self-worth when people neglect the fact that influencers are real people too. At the same time, it can also be difficult to balance one’s brand image and the brand as a business (and continue to monetize from it). I think that the personal psychology behind social media influencing is damaging, but at the end of the day, it is a job whether the influencer is getting paid or not.
Think about it, being an influencer is difficult like any other entrepreneurial venture, however, the only big difference is that the company/brand is YOU. Your personality, face, name, identity… it’s all public and extremely vulnerable.
Understanding Your Value
How are the social media metrics affecting us from understanding of value?
I believe our society views value by the quantity, and not by quality. If we remain on the topic of Instagram platforms; value is generally determined by the number of followers and flawless photos. Predominately for women, they are judged by how toned and beautiful they are, and men are criticized for how jacked up and handsome they portray themselves to be. Society and specifically the online society has created these standards, much like constructed societal norms. The outcome is these social media influencers that do the best job of maintaining those standards. The result of these standards is the creation of internet trolls that sit behind cameras or screens. They pretend to be one persona during the day, and another at night. Celebrities are doing the same thing pretty much, the only difference is that they already have the established platform, and most of them hide behind a PR team. The real problem is ordinary people valuing themselves based off of these standards… not good at all.
What troubles me the most is the young 13-year old girls and boys are trying to live up to these standards, and devaluing themselves for not attaining these ridiculous and unattainable measures.
It’s almost like we all live in this ‘fake world’ staring in our own fake reality television show.
The Potential Societal Consequences
If we used social media, like how it was intended to be used in its initial stage, I don’t believe we would be in this dilemma.
Social media was intended as a real representation and authenticity. With valuing the metrics, we have lost authenticity and connectivity. Social media has entangled us in a paradox effect; making us believe that we are more connected, but we really are not (source). By valuing the metrics, it contributes to a false reality, and an influencer’s audience can tell when something is fake.
On the positive side, a lot of influencers are using social media to better our society, like Ashley Graham who promotes body positivity. It is important to surround ourselves with powerful influencers that make you feel good about yourself, not insecure like the Kardashians who enforce unattainable standards.
Don’t be the star of your own fake reality TV show, and don’t engage in other ‘shows’ either. Instead, be true to yourself and build your brand with authenticity.
