We were hunters and gatherers for 90% of human existence. That means our brains are still wired to prioritize the things that kept us alive when we were living on the land, before the domestication of animals and the construction of cities. One thing that kept us alive was living in a tribe and cooperating. Attracting a tribe and fitting in was a requirement of life. That is why kids and teens are hyper-focused on doing what their friends do and working to be cool and accepted. Online influencers count on this drive to maintain their income streams. One way to attract kids online is to be a kid doing what kids love to do, playing with toys and video games, opening new packages, and hanging out with friends acting goofy. Netflix’s Bad Influencer offers a glimpse of the kid influencer “scene,” and the lengths that some parents will go to attract and keep a following.
What is Bad Influence about?
The limited documentary series has gone viral for good reason. It’s definitely entertaining, but also deeply unsettling. It is a perfect way to raise awareness about how scary a life all about social media can be. Bad Influencer is a documentary that focuses on a tween who becomes an overnight social media star and brings her friends to stardom with her. What started out as a fun hobby quickly turned into a living nightmare. It may seem glamorous to be famous online, until you learn that the child influencers spent the majority of their childhoods working long hours acting out video ideas, risky stunts, and performing pranks that sometimes went too far—all under the pressure of adult producers/parents hungry for views. Check out Intimacy With Minors Encouraged at the Hype House for a similar story of underage exploitation.
SPOILER ALERT: The show takes a chilling turn when the mother of the main character is accused of, and videotaped, sexually exploiting these kids on set by positioning herself as one of the only adults supervising them to control them. Some survived the battle with only a few scars, while the main character is stuck living this nightmare over and over again. It may be funny, exaggerated, and attention-grabbing, but it also paints a dark picture of a digital world where clout matters more than character and children are left to pay the price.
Psychology Behind the Fame Obsession
From a psychological point of view, being an influencer is cool to children because they have a natural need for validation, attention, and social connection.[1] Although the minimum age on most social media platforms is 13, it is reported that children ranging from 8-17 are found scrolling through online platforms soaking up content too mature for their ages.[2] Sadly, unlike real-world relationships, social media platforms offer fast, unfiltered dopamine hits through likes, shares, and views. Without proper guidance, this can make kids tie their self-worth to online numbers, which can result in low self-esteem, fear of missing out (FOMO), performance anxiety, and digital addiction.[3] As a result of social unlimited social media usage, kids can also experience anxiety, depression, and even poor quality of sleep.[4] Counteract this monster and help your child build emotional resilience, red flag awareness, and digital literacy by taking our GKIS Social Media Readiness Training Course. Geared for teens or tweens, it’s the perfect giftbefore that new device or video game.
What You Can Do to Help
Bad Influencer is not just a show; it’s a cautionary tale that shares the pressures kids face online every day. It is easy to get off topic and want to pull the plug on all electronics just to protect your child from their dangers, but that is not always possible. Technology and online platforms are all around us, and it is better to set your child up for success than to try to keep them out of the loop. Connecting with your child over what they find interesting can help create a trusting relationship where you can notice if things start to become a little off. Our free Connected Family Screen Agreement can help you and your child co-create rules around how to safely navigate online platforms. This way your child can thrive in the digital age without losing themselves in it.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Elaha Qudratulla for researching and co-writing this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe. Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Before the internet, “going viral” was not something positive much less something people actively sought out. “Going viral” has become a new age epidemic, with people doing whatever they can for their 60 seconds of fame. But what does “going viral” actually mean, and how does it affect our brains and our self-esteem? Today’s GKIS article will break down “going viral” and its effects. For help raising your child to be digitally smart, check out our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course. This course includes all GKIS parenting courses, agreements, and supplements, ensuring you are well-equipped to fight off digital injury and keep your child safe from harm.
What does it mean to “go viral”?
Going viral means sharing something via social media that spreads quickly to thousands, even millions of people. The term viral video was first used in 2009 to describe the video “David After Dentist.”[1]
One viral video or post can turn people into internet celebrities overnight and garner thousands of followers, resulting in brand deals and monetized content. Once a video goes viral, there is no limit to the number of people it will reach or even what platform they will see the video on. It is very common to see posts shared from one platform to the next, whether it be a TikTok on Twitter or a Tweet going viral on Instagram.
The number of views to be considered going viral also varies from platform to platform. One hundred thousand views on TikTok is pretty successful, whereas even a couple hundred thousand views on YouTube is a relatively low number.[2]
The number of likes is also an important factor. Many videos have a high number of views but a relatively low number of likes. These videos are not considered to be going viral because they are not well-received by the general public.[2] Engagement drives up the virality of the content through shares and comments that stimulate the algorithm to continue placing that content on people’s feeds.[2] Another important factor in going viral is the immediacy of response, meaning that the views, likes, and comments must be received within a few hours to days rather than over several months or years.[2]
How does “going viral” affect our brains?
When your video, post, or other content “goes viral,” you receive likes, comments, reposts, shares, and bookmarks. These response notifications prompt the reward systems in our brains.[3] Many fast notifications results in dopamine release. To keep that feel-good feeling going, we keep checking, acting in a way similar to gambling addictions.[3]
Algorithms also take advantage of a variable-reward system because they are programmed to recognize when to take advantage of our reward system and desire for dopamine.[3] This often results in a stockpile of notifications that get delayed until a good amount of time since the last check has passed or a large amount of engagement has accumulated.
For a personal insight into going viral, I interviewed a college student who had recently experienced the sensation of going viral. They said, “I recently had a video go viral on TikTok. It was a video of the Indie-Rock band Boygenius and one of their members, singer Phoebe Bridgers, singing a verse from their song ‘Cool About It.’ I had taken the video at a concert I had recently attended and decided to post it on TikTok since I was lucky enough to be pretty close to the stage. Over the next few days after I posted it, it got 118k views, 32k likes, and 500 comments, and was saved by more than 4000 people. Once it started picking up traction, I became obsessed with checking my notifications and seeing all the new comments. I would constantly look to see how many views I was at each hour. I even got a like from a TikTok creator who I really enjoy so that was very exciting for me.”
Although going viral is thrilling, notifications can be harmful when they are overly distracting.[4] To compensate for smartphone interruptions, studies have shown that people often work faster, resulting in more stress, frustration, time pressure, and effort.[4] Research has linked daily notifications and their interruptions to depression, anxiety, and even symptoms associated with ADHD.[5]
Our interview also revealed that the euphoria of going viral is short-lived and needs constant “re-upping.” Our subject elaborated, “Once the video started to die down though, I got annoyed by the notifications. They were distracting because they were so far and few in-between and nothing quite as exciting as the start. I got kinda sad that my viral moment was dying down. It made me want to post another video to see if it would get the same kind of attention.”
What does “going viral” do to our self-esteem?
Studies have shown that social media can be both detrimental to our self-esteem and boost it at the same time, but how does going viral change that?
Social media usage can add stress to daily life and encourage people to constantly evaluate and compare themselves to others.[6] When someone goes viral, they open themselves up to being judged by thousands of people, some of whom can be cruel, feeling emboldened by the veil of anonymity. While many would agree that the likes and views one receives on a viral post boosts their self-esteem and makes one feel good about themselves, it also allows for internet trolls to make their way into the comment section to bait others into an argument or provoke an emotional reaction.[7]
One-in-five internet users that have been victims of harassment online reported that it happened in the comment section of a website.[8] Reading negative comments can lessen confidence, reduce self-esteem, and depending on the severity, can even provoke suicidal thoughts.[9]
Our GKIS interviewee unfortunately also had experience with the negative side of going viral. They reported, “Before my video went super viral, I had posted another video that didn’t get as many views but still got a couple thousand views, a few hundred likes, and a good amount of comments. The video was clips of my girlfriend and me in celebration of our second anniversary. For the most part, the comments were really nice, with people calling us cute and being supportive. But after a little while of it being up, it got to the wrong side of TikTok. As a queer couple, we’re used to people being rude or staring at us, but to get negative comments just hurt more for some reason. This was a few months ago, but I still think about the comments from time to time. It honestly made me want to delete the whole video even though it was just a few comments out of a bunch of nice ones.”
How Parents Can Help
Understand that what you and your child post has the potential to go viral, even if you don’t want it to.
Set the privacy settings on posts to control who gets to see the content you share.
Prevent a digital injury to your child’s self-esteem before it occurs with our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit for parents of kids of all ages.
To help facilitate difficult conversations about online content and who should see it, try out our free GKIS Connected Family Screen Agreement.
At one time or another, many of us will think about becoming vegetarian. Cutting out meat, especially red meat, has environmental and nutritional benefits that have the average person considering changing their eating habits. “Going vegan,” where anything coming from an animal is removed from one’s diet, is seen as the ultimate step in curbing wasteful eating and improving health. Making the change to eat vegan can be hard. Young people look to social media, especially Instagram, for inspiration and advice on the best ways to lead a vegan lifestyle. Influencers are proposing diets that impose such high standards and strict regimens that the influencers themselves are unable to sustain them. These influencers have such a large reach, that followers often inaccurately perceive them as experts with true credibility. Should we trust Instagram influencers with dietary advice?
#Vegan
A casual Instagram search of #vegan brings up 77,937,967 posts.[1] Vegan images boast recipes meant to look and taste like delicious, non-vegan dishes like pizza, cupcakes, and brownies. This wide array of beautifully photographed options makes veganism seem desirable. However, with so many niche recipes, it can be overwhelming and confusing when selecting who really knows their stuff.
After all, veganism isn’t just a nutrition plan for most influencers. It appears to be a lifestyle. Doting followers scrutinize and memorize each carefully crafted post to share the vegan identity. However, even the most popular influencers are proving that pure veganism is hard to maintain long-term.
Another One Bites the Dust
Influencers are increasingly coming under scrutiny for straying from the vegan ideals that they’ve branded their image around. For instance, one notable vegan influencer lost all credibility and popularity after abandoning a dangerous “water-only” diet that lasted a whopping 35 days.[2]
Another popular vegan blogger received an outpouring of online hate after a video showed her eating fish.[3] Her supporters quickly turned against her, despite her pleas that she needed to quit being completely vegan to restore her health. In the world of vegan bloggers, there is no room for cheating. Only the most committed survive.
Where are the experts?
These influencers failed, not because being vegan is impossible, but because their fad diets were not sustainable. There’s significant danger in following diets created by somebody without expert nutritional training. Only a licensed professional can give accurate, informed nutritional advice.
As vegan influencers cultivate more and more followers, the risks become increasingly clear. Nutritionists are seeing more cases of malnourished teens due to unsafe vegan eating practices.[3]
Where is influencer credibility? There often isn’t any. The Internet is a buyer-beware digital marketplace. Teaching kids and teens how to assess expert credibility and defend themselves against unfair marketing techniques is crucial to good judgment and healthy eating choices.
Instagram: The Platform Your Kids Trust
Teens are genetically programmed to intensely focus on identifying and building their tribe. Looking to friends for uniquely identifying features, like dress, music, and slang is a vital part of growing up. Identification with popular food practices is often overlooked as an aspect of adolescent development.
A 2014 study explored the way peer relationships affect kids’ eating choices and attitudes toward food. When exposed to a peer they did not already know happily eating foreign food, children as young as preschool age began to show a liking for that food. This social referencing and modeling behavior can be conceptualized as children perceiving this peer as a “hero,” or someone to idolize.[4]
Instagram influencers carry this same appeal. Although strangers, they are similar enough to our kids to be perceived as peers. They carefully craft their brand to be perfectly positioned for influence, inspiration, and, ultimately, profit.
It isn’t simply a case of monkey-see, monkey-do. Teens may have good reasons for making dietary lifestyle choices. The trouble begins when unsafe dieting practices are blindly followed without realizing the risks.
A 2019 articledubs “Dr. Instagram” a threat to millennial health, citing that 38% of millennials have greater trust in their peers when it comes to health concerns than they do for actual medical professionals.[5] This highlights a legitimate concern that our kids may be dangerously ill-informed when it comes to health decisions.
Start Talking, Stay Healthy
Everyone should have the right to make dietary choices that make them happy and healthy. If your child is curious about going vegan or already is, consider these steps to ensure they remain healthy and safe.
Stress that Instagram content is entertainment only.
Help them set up a relationship with an informed adult to help them make good decisions when it comes to online influences.
If your child is considering a radical nutritional shift, require that they see a licensed nutritionist for healthy planning.
Encourage your child to prioritize personal health over popular fads.
Thank you to our GKIS intern Chelsea Letham for reminding us that teaching our kids how to accurately assess expertise and credibility is a critical life skill. To help your kids use good judgment online and not fall victim to risky diets and lifestyle choices, pick up your quick-and-easy supplement How to Spot Marketing Red Flag Supplement today.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
[1] https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/vegan/?hl=en
[2] Libatique, R. (2019, February 20). Ex-vegan Tim Shieff dropped by vegan clothing company ETHCS. Vegan News. Retrieved from https://vegannews.co/
[3] Horton, H. (2019, March 24). Instagram vegan diets are risking malnutrition among millennials, Harley Street nutritionists warn. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
[4] Houldcraft, L., Haycraft, E., & Farrow, C. (2014). Peer and friend influences on children’s eating. Social Development, 23(1), 19-40. doi: 10.1111/sode.12036
[5] Jackson Gee, T. (2019, April 7). Is Dr. Instagram ruining your health? The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Child fantasy jobs used to be astronaut, doctor, or professional athlete. Nowadays, kids all dream of being a YouTube Celebrity. In the GKIS article, GetKidsInternetSafe Tips for YouTube, we touched on why kids love these celebrities and the appeal of the let’s play video. In this article, you’ll find out how YouTube celebrities build their brands and maintain popularity. You may be surprised to learn it isn’t as easy as it looks.
What is a YouTube celebrity?
In the ‘social media era,’ children and adolescents are consumed by screen time. While TV, Blockbuster, cable, CD’s, and iPods reigned in the 1990’s, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon Prime rule today. According to Pew Research Center’s recent report on teens, social media, and technology, 95% of teens have smartphone access, and 45% claim that they are online ‘almost constantly’. [1]
YouTube is the most popular social media platform in the world. Valued at $100 billion, this wildly successful platform allows people to create careers by uploading videos and serving followers.
With the evolution of online marketing, the concept of “celebrity” and “influencer” has shifted. Instead of a celebrity ruled by stylists, publicists, and managers, now “everyday people” can build their individual brand. Many YouTube celebrities attract millions of view and earn the loyalty of obsessed subscribers. Big money can be made with brand deals, ad sponsorships, award shows, product lines, and conferences.
Why are YouTube celebrities so popular?
Successful YouTube celebrities know their audience. Through fad tracking, affiliate marketing, and frequent interaction and surveys with subscribers, they find out what their audience wants…and they give it to them. YouTube celebrity videos range from makeup tutorials, do-it-yourself (DIY) crafts, let’s play videos (playing video games on camera with reactions and tips), pimple popping, and dangerous pranks. You name it, YouTube most likely has it. YouTube celebrities work hard to drive subscribers to their site, building a platform so they can make millions of dollars annually. Why are YouTube celebrities so popular among youth?
YouTube celebrities are better at creating relationships.
Unlike highly-produced mainstream celebrities, YouTube celebrities seem relatable to kids. They are not afraid to be themselves and tend to share personal experiences about sensitive topics like sex, drugs, mental health, dating, and abuse. They are like the crazy aunts and uncles we used to seek out at family reunions. More outlandish than parents, they make fun mentors.
YouTube celebrities are accessible.
Available on demand, YouTube celebrities make deliberate efforts to acknowledge and talk directly to their viewers. They are accessible through social media, answer questions in Q&A panels, and regularly respond on comments with their viewers. The relationship YouTube celebrities develop with their fan base leads to quality engagement. A study commissioned by Google has shown that 70% of teenage YouTube subscribers relate to YouTubers more than the traditional celebrity. [2]
Kids are lonely, depressed, and anxious.
As parent fear has increased, child exploration range has decreased. This leaves kids indoors for hours a day with nothing to do. Playdates no longer happen riding bikes in a pack around town. Now they happen online through social media and gaming platforms. Although somewhat entertaining and satisfying, long hours online canleave kids fatigued and depleted. They get some contact with friends, but not the kind that feeds the soul. Dr. Bennett and other researchers believe screen time is a big contributor to rising child and adolescent mental health disorder rates.
Production is cheap.
Starting a YouTube channel can be as simple as having a phone camera, webcam, GoPro, or professional camera. What makes YouTube so appealing is not the equipment needed to make a video, but the voice and techniques used to build an audience and draw them in. A set, expensive cameras, actors, or directors are not needed for a quality YouTube video.
One example is YouTuber celebrity, Trisha Paytas, who started her channel in 2007 as a daily vlogger(video blogging) with a camera in hand and room as her set. Since then, she has created two successful YouTube channels that have millions of subscribers and billions of views.
She discusses overly candid, explicit topics like sex toy reviews, when she dated a serial killer, and the time she had sex with a whole football team at once. She also films Mukbang videos (eating large amounts of food while interacting in front of the camera), discusses her multiple plastic surgeries, and makes music videos. She’s so funny and charming, you just can’t look away. Her net worth is between $3-$4 million.
Discussion topics are edgy, controversial, sensational, and juicy.
Dr. Bennett shared during our last intern meeting that her son and kids in her practice are currently obsessed with Shane Dawson’s documentary-type analysis of Jake Paul. Providing evidence for the hypothesis that Jake Paul has sociopathy, this series provokes controversy, raises ethical questions (is it bullying?), and heightens competition. Dr. Bennett’s analysis of the situation provides interesting content to launch conversations about social dynamics, business concepts, and online morality. For instance, he was very concerned if Shane Dawson is qualified to publicly diagnose another celebrity with mental illness. Is that bullying with questionable credibility? Or is it a savvy YouTube celebrity feud staged to pit each celebrity’s fan base against each other and drive more traffic to their sites? Dr. Bennett’s comments have me wondering, are other parents using these learning opportunities like she is? Or do most kids keep their viewing ideas private from family members?
Wondering how to protect your kids from Paytas-like YouTube content? Buy our online GKIS Connected Family Course and start ten easy pro-steps for screen sanity and fun cooperation.
Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Sasha Mejia for her awesome research and for writing this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Katherine Carroll for researching “going viral” and its effect on the brain and self-esteem.
