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.
Janelle Rohner is a fitness influencer who has 4.8 million followers on TikTok on her account @janellerohner as of March 2020. She grew her fan base by promoting the keto diet and talking about her fitness journey. On her website, she has 58 keto recipes, and in her videos, she would film videos of herself making and eating these recipes to show how good the keto diet is. On March 8th, 2020, she posted a blog post on her website, saying that she has changed her diet to live a more balanced lifestyle and not be keto. After not being keto, she has lost a lot of weight and become a lot healthier. In that article, she also said that she is “not a nutritionist or dietician” but is in the process of being a macro coach. Therefore, her advice that she spread to millions of people about the importance and benefits of being keto was not backed up. Spreading information that she was not qualified enough to share and giving out health advice promoted a false reality that it was healthy to follow this strict diet. This could have a lot of unintended consequences in her followers who decided to become keto because they watched all of her videos that said how good it was.
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. Companies have a lot of data, and using the data to promote targeted content to users can be extremely harmful and not ethical. Social media platforms know a lot of information about their users by keeping track of their online actions and what content they are searching for. Therefore, if a user is going on a lot of weight loss websites or only looking at diet videos, it is easy for platforms to infer that the user has an eating disorder or body issues. Since companies have this data and want to make the most amount of money from the user, they will still promote unhealthy fitness influencers to these people because they know that it will get their attention, even though it is not ethical.
Posting modified pictures that are photoshopped to social media platforms is another way that influencers promote unrealistic beauty standards. In order to attract followers and gain popularity, influencers have to somewhat fit into the typical beauty standard so people will care and idolize them. Also, when the person has a large following, their life and even career revolve around likes. Having a large number of likes validates people and tells them that they fit into societal norms. Followers then look up to these influencers and get a false sense of what is considered beautiful and attractive and what is not. Many people turn to social media to show them what they should change about themselves and live up to an unrealistic standard. Since most of the posts that people see are photoshopped or modified, social media promotes an impossible standard of beauty that many people are influenced by and try to live up to.
Tana Mongeau is a social media influencer with about 5 million subscribers on Youtube and 5.7 million Instagram followers as of February 2022. In November 2019, Tana posted a red carpet photo. Her followers were quick to pick up on the fact that she drastically changed her appearance in the photo and has a completely different look than what was posted of her on other sources online. She modified her face by making her jaw slimmer and her lips bigger. She never said anywhere on the photo she posted that it was modified, so when people viewed her post, there was no reason to doubt that the photo accurately represented how she looked.
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 and 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. A lot of the events she goes to, and expensive meals that she eats are provided by companies, but she never makes that clear to viewers. Therefore, some viewers could try to mimic her lifestyle but would fall short because it would be impossible to go to the same places and buy the same things as her without constantly getting free stuff.
Remi also has her vlog channel RemLife. Remi rose to popularity after she lost a lot of weight after undergoing extreme dieting and exercise. 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 was more open with viewers and decided to post about how she gained weight and how she spends most days staying at home, rather than constantly being busy like she showcased before. Rather than only focusing on dieting and filming on certain days, she showcases how her weight fluctuates and how that makes her feel. 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 as of January 2022. 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. On her podcast, Pretty Basic, she recently talked about how unhappy she was while filming with other influencers and how much they disliked each other.
To continue to be more authentic with viewers, 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. This created a shift in the influencer community and made influencers try to promote more of their unfabricated self.
She also continued spreading positivity in 2021 when 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. Parallel Apparel is an excellent example that even if influencers have the intention to be less fake, they still have to promote some sort of ideal lifestyle to make money and maintain followers.
After watching and seeing influencers on a lot of social media platforms, I decided that I wanted to see what it was like from the perspective of an influencer. During the summer of 2018, I started an Instagram account called Cockapoopico. I did hours of research on how to grow my account and have a lot of followers. After a month of joining engagement groups and commenting on and liking random posts to increase my followers, I gained over 10,000 followers. Even though I posted frequently, not many people followed me organically. 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 Direct Messaging. 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. Ultimately, becoming a mini influencer reinforced my viewpoint that influencers promote a vastly unrealistic lifestyle that is unclear to viewers.
References:
Bruyer, Abby. “Fitness Influencer Culture Promotes Unhealthy Body Image.” The Gateway, 12 Nov. 2020, https://thegatewayonline.ca/2020/11/the-dangers-of-fitness-influencer-culture-on-social-media/.
Rohner, Janelle. “Janelle Rohner — It’s Not a Diet, It’s a Lifestyle.” Janelle Rohner — It’s Not a Diet, It’s a Lifestyle — Keto and Healthy Eating, 8 Mar. 2022, https://www.janellerohner.com/.
