Over the last couple of years, the influence that so-called ‘social media influencers’ have on their followers increased immensely. Influencers often do not like the fact that they are called like that. I have to admit that being an influencer for work does sound quite pretentious and foolish. However, their job is not named like that for no reason and the far reaching impact influencers have, especially on young people, should not be underestimated.
Social media affects the mental health of a lot of young people in a negative way. Feelings of anxiety, loneliness and fear of missing out are common under users of social media and followers of influencers. One of the most important causes of social media negatively affecting young people is the promotion of unreasonable expectations (Edmonds). A lot of young people who follow influencers on instagram or youtube, make unreasonable comparisons. Next to the promotion of unreasonable expectations, influencers also play a role in influencing the buying behaviour of young people. It’s not without reason that influencer marketing is a booming strategy for advertisers to target an audience. As people are spending much of their time online during the COVID-19 pandemic, this advertisement strategy has become even more important. However, I believe influencers do not only influence buying behaviour but are also able to affect behaviour of youth in general. In my opinion, using influencer marketing for government purposes should be given more attention.
Let’s zoom in at the Covid-19 pandemic. As an article by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published earlier this year states, public voice on social media can be seen as an useful form of cooperation between social media content creators and governments to maintain social stability under public health emergencies (Yang & Su, 2020). For a lot of young people, COVID-19 keeps being an abstract disease and respecting the governmental measures is often perceived as difficult. In public health emergencies like COVID-19, exploiting the voice that influencers have is something indispensable in my opinion. Not only in a way translating the needs and wants of the government to the social media public, but also the other way around. People who do not agree with governmental measures should also be able to speak up, and the voice of social media influencers can be a good platform. Collaboration between the government and social media influencers should be well-considered, as the Dutch videos of influencers in collaboration with the government in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic did not reach the desired effect. One of the reasons why these videos were not as successful as hoped for is that ‘influencing’ works unconscious, while videos containing informative content about corona measures is not an unconscious way of influencing. However, as we live in such a digital era and as life has shifted online more than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe the government should deeper investigate its opportunities regarding the public voice of social media influencers. What is your opinion on the use of social media influencers to translate government wants and needs to the younger audience?
Hi Frederiek! Interesting post, and a very interesting current topic. I definitely agree with you in that influencers have a huge impact on youth. Mental health of young people can be especially unstable, and influencers can play right into that. The whole strength of influencers is unconsciously playing on social media users’ weaknesses, by showing adds or manipulating their views.
However, like you mentioned, there can also be a positive take from influencers, by using them to draw the attention of young people to the dangers of covid-19. There is a big drawback though. Influencers base their success on an active and popular social media profile. One of the drivers for this success is posting interesting pictures of their daily lives. Covid-19 lockdown pictures aren’t interesting. What we saw was that initially, back in march, a lot of popular Instagram starts started warning their followers of the dangers of coronavirus. Great right? Not really, because after a few weeks, they figured they didn’t have any content to post to their profiles, so they started socializing again, ignoring 1.5m and other government regulations, even though they were the ones initially warning us of the dangers of covid-19. Seems hypocritical to me…
I think the topic of influencers and their conscious and unconscious effects on social-media users, is always an important topic. Sometimes people tend to forget the fact that influencers as they exist today, have only been around for a short period of time. Nevertheless, people seem to have gotten used to them very quickly. Social media, and aligned with that the influencers, are heavily impacting our lives. I think it is nice that you touched upon the topic of influencers, in combination with the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, there might be a great opportunity for the government to work with influencers. However, this must be thought through very carefully.
Around a week ago, several Dutch famous influencers and singers launched the campaign ‘Ik doe niet meer mee’. In the campaign the influencers uploaded videos saying “Only together we can control the government, I don’t do this anymore”. This campaign was poorly received in the big media, and a lot of negative comments were placed. The influencers made it sound like they would not act upon the rules anymore, rules such as keeping 1.5 metre distance, wearing a facemask in public transport etc.
However, in the end, very few of the influencers that uploaded those videos were actually able to speak up in the media and to explain the message they wanted to spread. Most of the influencers deleted their posts about the topic.Famke Louise was one of them that did speak up. She visited the famous Dutch talk show called Jinek. However, her conversation with Jinek and the other talks how guests went quite horrible. She could not find the right words to explain the campaign accurately, and she could not answer any question about the message she wanted to spread.
These kinds of campaigns can be dangerous. Those influencers possess immense amounts of followers, mostly teenagers and students. As a student, I personally totally agree upon the fact that something has to happen to better represent our generation in this current corona situation. I would encourage students and teenagers to speak out loud. I would encourage influencers to use their platform to reach a great public. However, please carefully think through which message you want to spread, and how. In today’s word, messages are spread so quickly on social media. Be aware of this.
Linking back to the role of the government, I think it is a good idea for the government to work together with influencers. However, this must be thought through very carefully. A team of different influencers, generation representatives and media experts should be in place. Then, I really see a potential for success.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/09/23/als-lege-aandachtszoekers-aan-de-poort-staan-laat-dan-talkshows-eens-zeggen-ikdoenietmeermee-a4013207