Social Media Influencers Promote Unrealistic Expectations
Social media influencers are people who post content on various platforms and have a large follower audience. Having so many people look up to them is how influencers are able to get brand deals and make money. The number of people using social media increases each year, so influencers have more and more control. Even though these influencers seem harmless, they really do more harm than good. Most influencers, knowingly or not, promote vastly unrealistic expectations of what an ideal life should look like. This false or exaggerated sense of reality then causes various mental health impacts on impressional followers.
Fitness influencers are one type of influencer that causes both mental and physical harm to their audience. Fitness influencers show extreme diets and exercise routines to stay interesting and get attention. A study in an article from gateway found that 16.4% of fitness influencers have fitness certifications, meaning most of the information online from these influencers is wrong and not backed up by scientific evidence. The diets and exercise routines that are portrayed to viewers as effective and proven ways to be healthier are just made up by people with no credibility. The impacts of these fad diets and routines are very severe- children and young adults can become malnourished and have serious injuries. Also, for the rest of their lives, viewers could have a negative connotation with fitness or their overall option on food or themselves. In the article Critical Questions for Big Data (2012), Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford talk about the ethics surrounding big data. One topic they talk about is how even though data is available, it is not always ethical to use it. Social media platforms know that people have eating disorders or body issues based on their online actions. Platforms still promote unhealthy fitness influencers to these people because they know that it will get their attention, even though it is not ethical.
Remi Cruz is a social media influencer who has 1 million Instagram followers and 2.53 million subscribers on her main Youtube account MissRemiAshten and 1.41 million subscribers on her Youtube vlog channel, RemLife (as of January 2022). On her MissRemiAshten account, she posts a mix of lifestyle videos like makeup tutorials for shopping hauls. One thing that she is known for is her elaborate and well-filmed food videos. On this account, she showcases an extravagant life filled with expensive and complex foods and clothing hauls filled with luxury and designer items. However, she utilizes her RemLife vlog channel and Instagram account to highlight her more down-to-earth and relatable side. Remi rose to popularity after she lost a lot of weight, so she posts videos on the ups and downs of her weight loss. Rather than only focusing on dieting and filming on certain days, she showcases how her weight fluctuates and how that makes her feel. From about 2018-to 2020, RemLife was filled with unrealistic what I eat in day videos and unhealthy workout routines. In 2020 there was a shift in her RemLife content where she opened more up to viewers and decided to post how she gained weight and how she spends most days staying at home, rather than constantly being busy like she showcased before. Even though she changed her content to be more relatable, she still has her old YouTube videos and Instagram posts from the time in her life when she was promoting unrealistic health goals. The Youtube algorithm can still show impressionable people her old videos, making it hard for Remi to change her image completely.
Alisha Marie is a social media influencer with 3.4 million Instagram followers and 8.07 million subscribers on her main Youtube account AlishaMarie and 3.1 million subscribers on her vlog channel AlishaMarieVlogs. Alisha started to rise to fame and gain followers around 2016 when she would post highly saturated and staged videos about various topics like back to school. The videos included collaborations with other Youtube influencers and elaborate and expensive hauls, making it seem like she was always happy and had a lot of friends. In May 2018, she made a video on her account AlishaMarie publicly talking about how she was dealing with burnout. For the first time, she showcased how constantly being in the spotlight and putting on a fake smile to make videos she was not passionate about took a toll on her mental health. After returning to Youtube after her break, she got more raw with viewers and showcased other aspects of her life that she kept hidden, such as her mental health. She opened up about having a hard time dealing with hate comments that criticized her body. In 2021 she started a clothing brand with her sister called Parallel Apparel. The main idea around Parallel Apparel was to create size-inclusive loungewear that made people look confident while being comfortable. Their slogan “Sexy As Is” aimed to tell people that they are perfect the way they are and do not need to change themselves to fit into preexisting beauty standards. At first glance, the messages she was trying to promote and her clothing line seem like they positively affect people. However, they promote a concept called body checking, where people constantly check their appearance and place a lot of value on their looks. The clothing line gave people the impression that the one goal of life is just to look sexy.
During the summer of 2018, I started an Instagram account called Cockapoopico to try to see what it was like to become an influencer. I did hours of research on how to grow my account and have a lot of followers. After a month of joining groups and commenting on random posts to increase my followers, I gained over 1,000 followers. Even though I posted frequently, not many people followed me organically. Once I had over 5,000 followers, I was growing quicker, and hundreds of people would follow me each day at a chance to get a shoutout. Follow trains were the primary way I grew my audience. Follow trains are where a special account posts every day during a certain time, and people comment on the post and tag other accounts. Once someone comments, the follow train account follows them for a short time period. Then everyone who comments has to follow everyone that the follow train account follows. If someone does not follow everyone else, they are blocked and can never join again. Hosts are special because they do not need not follow anyone and everyone follows them. When I had over 5,000 followers, I became the host of multiple follow trains in return for an Instagram story shoutout. Unintentionally, I contributed to the pattern of promoting false realities on Instagram. Even though my account seemed popular with over 10.3 thousand followers, I had to work to get each follower, most of whom were inactive.
Once I reached the 10,000 followers mark, I started to get a lot of brands reaching out to me via Instagram DM. Companies that are well known would ask me for my address to send me their newest products in return for a post tagging and featuring them. For about a month, I was getting new packages every day with dog toys and accessories that I did not pay for. I would take all of the products and post a picture of my dog using them to try to convince my followers to purchase them. One time I got dog food that came in a frozen box where all of the ice had melted, which spoiled the food. I obviously did not give that food to my dog to try, but I still posted a picture of my dog with the food next to him to pretend he liked it. Me making a product that I hated seem like something I loved proves how some of the ads posted on social media promote unrealistic ideas about products.
