Why I’m not taking influence from influencers

With 213 million followers on Instagram, Kylie Jenner rakes in an incomprehensible average of $1.27 million per sponsored post on Instagram. As a “social-influencer”, posting one glossy photo of her plumped lips and peachy backside alongside a product, will make Kylie more than most of us will earn in a lifetime.

The term ‘influencer’ has two definitions: ‘someone who affects or changes the way other people behave’ and ‘a person who is paid by a company to show and describe its products and services on social media, encouraging other people to buy them’.

The influencing industry has grown at an exponential rate over recent years, carving out an entirely new lifestyle and career path for Millennials and Gen Z. Admittedly I can see the appeal; it seems pretty idyllic - cash rich and, for the most part, free of the hard graft most other work demands. Research conducted by Awin in 2019 found that ‘influencer’ was the second most popular profession, below doctor, amongst children aged between 11 and 16. 

Due to my disinterest and wariness around social media, I remain aloof from this new strand of contemporary culture. As a bystander, the impact that influencer culture is having on us as both individuals and a generation, shaping our collective values and ideals, is achingly obvious. 

Social media has led us into a dangerous territory: where online followers equate to social power. Individuals are being put on a pedestal and with entrusted with our faith, without their motivations and intentions having been vetted first. Social media influencers now play a major part in determining the realities of our future, many of whose contributions to society don’t benefit anyone other than themselves. 

What’s more, the likes of Kylie Jenner and her sister Kendall Jenner have done little to deserve such position beyond being born into good looks and wealth; and in holding these people up as icons, we are fortifying a culture that values appearance and wealth over talent, skill, hard-work and selflessness. 

There is, of course, a wonderful, sprawling community of influencers with genuinely good intentions. Many influencers are using their visibility online to counterbalance the toxicity of the social media world. Stephanie Yeboah, Mik Zazon, Megan Jayne Crabbe (to name a few) are heading up the ‘body-positivity’ movement, spreading messages and images of acceptance, diversity and honesty. Anna Sweeney has earned a following for her debunking of diet myths and work as an ‘intuitive eating counsellor’, whilst Kai Wes stands as a strong voice for the trans and non-binary communities. The sad truth, however, is their audience numbers are merely a fraction of Kylie Jenner’s. 

Influencers use the ‘motivation’ and ‘inspiration’ of their followers as a guise by which to validate their work, whilst in fact capitalising off our insecurities and selling us dreams only obtainable through consumerism. In return for their own financial gain, they encourage us to buy the life we want to live, promoting products with the promise of a slice of their reality. We tend to forget that influencing is an occupation, and instil our trust in people who are, for the most part, far more preoccupied with their wealth than our welfare.

Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian, along with Kylie and Kris Jenner, have used their Instagram platforms to promote Flat Tummy Co’s range of ‘detox teas’ and ‘appetite suppressant lollipops’. Not only do these products induce harmful laxative side-effects, but they also encourage disordered eating amongst young women. Kim Kardashian clearly didn’t have the interests of her 111 million followers at heart, when she shared a photo of herself sucking on a Flat Tummy Lollipop, describing it as “literally unreal”. With the influence that she exerts, irretrievable damage will have been done.

Most of the time, influencers won’t even have tried the products that they’re plugging. Kim Kardashian would’ve only had to bring that lollipop to her lips for the time needed to take a selfie, and she would’ve earned herself a six-figure payment. Feminist writer Jameela Jamil rightly pointed out that Kim had failed to mention “the fact that you have a personal trainer, nutritionist, probable chef, and a surgeon to achieve your aesthetic, rather than this laxative product…”. 

Not only are the messages spread through these product endorsements harmful, but they are simply untrue. Both the companies being endorsed, and the influencers themselves,  are profiting off us feeling bad about ourselves. 

We are drip-fed a steady stream of hyperbole and lies, snippets of a life that have been crafted, constructed and cherry-picked to create an image that is frankly unrealistic for most of us. Scrolling through endless images of lives that are extra-ordinary, it’s easy to forget that most people around us are leading lives as perfectly ordinary as our own. This, by no means implies that our lives are dull or mundane, more that our lifestyles aren’t funded by obscene wealth and fame.

Influencer-culture is sowing the seeds for society rife with depression, greed, vanity and self-righteousness. We are fed the poisonous notion that life’s sweetest pleasures come in material form, and look good on our Instagram grid. Our own joys are diluted by the seemingly superior joys of others, perpetuating feelings of dissatisfaction and inadequacy within a generation already riddled with self doubt and hyper self-criticism. 

But isn’t it ironic that an influencer probably spends more time constructing, perfecting and capturing their life than they do actually living it? I would argue that the lives worth taking an interest in, aren’t the ones which are spent staring at a phone screen. 

The content put out by most influencers rarely ventures beyond life’s superficialities — photos of their outfits, food choices and perfectly-angled silhouettes. But these mundanities do not inspire me. What am I supposed to glean from a video of model Emily Ratajkowski pushing her bikini-clad breasts towards a camera? Little besides feelings of self-loathing. 

Instead, I want to listen to the voices of people who have done something to earn their platform. I want to be influenced in solely positive and productive ways, motivated to achieve happiness and success through skill, creativity, determination and integrity. I want to be inspired by matters beyond my physicality and possessions. 

In my eyes, those deserving of our time and attention are the ones who dedicate their lives to bettering the world around them — not to sucking it dry of money and self-esteem. 

So maybe that means having a spring-clean on the people we follow online, being more selective with our support, attention and time, redirecting it to the likes of Jameela Jamil or Anna Sweeney — making sure we don’t reinforce a system that does us no good. 

Or maybe that means boycotting ‘influencer culture’ altogether; taking our natural human desire to be led, guided and inspired offline, to books, or artists, or people in the communities around us to people who aren’t intentionally playing on our vulnerabilities and whose visions of the future aren’t built of material things.

These are the people I want to gift with the power of influence over me.