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?
