Being an influencer is not all glamour and fun

Think back. As a kid, how did you answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Doctor? Teacher? Fighter pilot or astronaut? For me personally, it was—of all things—meteorologist. Yes, as a young kid, I dreamed of going on television to cover the weather. 

While I’m sure there are still budding doctors, teachers, and even meteorologists out there, kids today have different aspirations. They want to be influencers! A big name on YouTube with 1,000,0000 subscribers. A sponsored Instagrammer making thousands of dollars per post, a la Kim Kardashian. According to the Influencer Report published by Morningstar, 54% of young Americans would become an influencer if they had the chance. And 86% would post sponsored content for money.

Quick refresher: what’s an influencer?

As a parent, it’s good to know what our kids aspire to be. That way, we can help guide them in the right direction, temper their expectations, and provide support (even if we think the idea is a little bit absurd). Yet, influencers are nothing to scoff at. They’re people (or accounts) on different social media networks, most notably Instagram and YouTube, with large enough followings to attract the sponsorship of different brands, companies and organizations. 

If someone has paid you to post a picture of yourself holding or using their product, you’re probably an influencer.

Naturally, “being a social media star” is very attractive to young people, especially given how much time they spend on these social media platforms. Why not? Influencers are famous, ostensibly wealthy, and able to travel to exotic countries. Cool companies give them stuff for free.

Why the influencer life isn’t all that it seems

What children (and parents, for that matter) tend to overlook is the negative side of the equation. The road to becoming an Instagram star is a steep one with no guarantees and plenty of drawbacks. Here are a few things to consider:

1. Creating frequent, high-quality content is hard work

Snapping selfies simply isn’t enough. Building a large following requires a great deal of forethought about branding, strategy and voice. Creating new and interesting posts every single day can be time-consuming and exhausting—especially if you take the time to get the production right. 

What’s more, all of these efforts need to be sustained, daily, for a long period of time. It never ends, really, which can be emotionally demanding for a young person. All this effort makes it particularly discouraging when followers ignore or poke fun at the result. 

2. Followers don’t always equal friends

Constantly posting to social media can quickly become an obsession. Aspiring influencers might find themselves equating their self-worth with likes, shares and number of followers, which is a slippery slope at best. It’s easy to see how a young person might become dependent on their anonymous (and fickle) online following at the expense of their real-life relationships. When things get rough, the letdown can be painful.

3. The hate is real

With great digital visibility comes exposure to online hate, cyberbullying and trolls. We’ve all seen comment sections and Instagram replies flooded with hateful messages. For a kid, this kind of online hatred is at best an emotional drag; at worst, it can represent a real threat to their mental and physical health. Unfortunately, nasty comments and trolling will be part of any person’s rise to internet stardom, no matter how successful they might be. 

4. The tendency to overshare

Being an influencer means sharing lots and lots of content. Often, this can lead to oversharing. At its best, oversharing smacks of desperation (do we really need a picture of every meal and Starbucks coffee??). At its worst, oversharing can be a liability. 

Take our friend Kim Kardashian, one of the most influential figures on social media. Kim posts and shares a lot from her private life. During one of her visits to Paris, this backfired in the worst possible way, as she was robbed of millions at gunpoint. Unfortunately, it later came to light that the heist was organized based on information gleaned from Kim’s social media posts. 

This example of oversharing should be a warning to anyone, especially to young influencers, who will do almost anything to please their followers. Parental guidance from the very beginning of a child’s digital life is essential. It helps set healthy boundaries between public and private life on social media. We like to remind people that anything posted online will stay there forever, one way or another. Maybe this will give kids pause before they give in to the tendency to overshare.

5. Pretty profiles don’t show the whole picture

Often, what we see portrayed on social media is not real life.  Most posts by influencers are staged and heavily edited. For a kid, though—an aspiring social media influencer—this can create a false sense of inadequacy. The truth is, anything can be made to look prettier, fancier and more appealing with a supercomputer. Videos and photos are only snapshots. There’s so much more that’s a lot less glamorous that goes into creating influencer content.

Just because it shines, doesn’t mean it’s gold. 

How can parents guide their young “influencers” in the right direction?

As much as we might not understand influencer culture, belittling or forbidding a kid’s pipe dreams usually backfires. Hopefully, the list of cautions above can provide some conversation starters about the realities of social media stardom. 

The truth is, this generation of kids is going to create social media content, one way or another. Why not guide them toward what’s sensible, safe and appropriate? One tactic is to have planning or strategy sessions. Treat their ambitions professionally by sitting down with them to hash out a plan. In doing so, you can highlight things about the influencer channels they like that might shed light on the realities of influencer life: The frequency of content production. The demanding production values (and what goes into that). The conversations happening in the comments. The “niche” or unifying theme the influencer has hashed out.

By making it real in these ways, we can organically touch on the cautionary tales, drawbacks and potential dangers of becoming an influencer. Heck, we all wanted to become astronauts when we were kids. Once we realized that it requires an advanced STEM degree and 1,000+ hours of flight time, our ambitions, shall we say, tapered off.