What is Social Media?
Social media is a medium through which interaction takes place in computer-based technology. It helps in the exchange of knowledge, stories, thoughts, sharing ideas and views among virtual groups or networks. Social networking is internet-based and provides consumers with fast electronic sharing of information. It has both positive and negative effects on peoplepsychology.
Social networking is about conversation, culture, communicating with the viewer, and creating connections. The popular social media tools Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.
Who are Social Media Influencers?
Social media influencers are those people who share their opinion and idea and try to shape public opinions and attitudes. With the help of blogs, tweets, photos, videos they can influence and attracts viewers. Influencers are the one that can influence and draw other people’s actions
Social media influencers are the ones who have developed a reputation among people. Whose every voice is powerful enough to influence other people. They also have the power to raise awareness and movement by creating a campaign.
How are Social Media Affecting Children?
Over time, the field of social media is rising and so is its effect on human life. Social media influencers are the first ones to use or test new products and services. They give reviews on whether those products are worth buying or not.
Children blindly trust social media and influencers on it as they find them informative. Because of the active participation of influencers in the online platform. They are also considered as the ones who set new trends in the market as they are continuously posting stuff. So basically they set new trends in the market.
Social media influencer influences in such a way that children are bound to change their behavior, attitude. There can be both desirable and negative the effect of social media influencers on minors.
Some of The Positive Impact Made By The Social Media Influencer on Child
Creating Awareness
Social media provides a powerful platform for the influencers they can shares their thoughts, stories, and make sure it reaches everyone. By using hashtags trends or maybe starting a campaign it will help to raise awareness and build unity to protest through social media.
If kids want to buy some products then, they can look at the products’ reviews posted by social media influencers.
Creating Communities
Children trust and respect influential personalities who are within a certain culture. Every community has a different culture and each community has similar kinds of tastes, preferences, viewpoints, thoughts. One can share openly with another and get inspired.
Provide free entertainment
It is absolutely free to read and follow the blog or the content that the social media influencer posted. You can find millions of blogs that is been posted daily and you don’t even have to spend a single penny to read the blogs.
Now that children can get informative knowledge along with the latest trends to follow which will keep them entertained.
Get motivated:
Social media influencers can create powerful messages which will motivate their audiences. Social media influencer has a huge fan following among the children. They consider them as a role model and get inspired by their work, ability, and skills.
For instance, social media influence who post blogs or videos related to health will inspire kids to get healthy and take care of their health.
Learning:
Children trust their role models more than themselves. Here role models are someone whom they are following. They trust every single opinion and information coming from them and behave accordingly.
By following social media influencers, kids can learn about new products, their features, price, product performance, and many more. Social media influencers also teach kids how to use the products and how they can repair their products if they face any problem with their products.
Some of The Negative Impacts of Social Media Influencer on Child
May Hurt Self-Esteem:
Social media influencers post something that could attract viewers. They wanted to show the best on the internet, which may not be right every time.
Children start comparing their body structure and appearance with the media stars and by doing so they are hurting their self-esteem. This will lower the confidence level that one carries around.
Likewise, kids may not have the idea of the amount of effort social media influencers put to post one perfect picture, and kids start to think they do such a thing effortlessly. And whether try to copy them they might fail at first and second attempt which can hurt their esteem.
Lifestyle Change
After watching the videos of Vloggers, gamers, beauty gurus, models and following them on daily basis, and gets inspired. Children have young and fresh minds, they are ready to learn and explore.
Because of their curiosity, they have a quest to live the lives of social media influencers. They quickly adapt to how influencers are behaving, talking, and acting. This will make children take scandalous actions. Which are getting more and more dangerous to their mental health.
Impact on Children Diet
In recent times, vlogs are getting more attention among children and teenagers. Vlogs now became the platform where food marketing is mostly popular.
Sponsors sponsoring to promote their product through media influencers. Social media influencers mainly endorse dangerous beverages and diets. These rich in sugar and salt products and their consumption is harmful.
Children want to eat whatever these social media influencers are having which may result in overweight, obesity, non-communicable disease.
Copying
Children now are posting content, blogs, videos, pictures, etc in online just to get more famous, getting more likes, comments. For this children can go to any level as they are not in the position to think what is wrong and right for them.
The Wrong Flow of Information
Social media influencers are posting any messages, content, blogs every single time. The content, blogs, photo, social media influencers are posting may look normal to them.
But can convey the wrong message to the children they make it look cool to smoke, drink and also is okay to have junk foods and even drugs.
Incomplete information or any misleading photos can lead a child to have the wrong perception. There may be a chance of conveying the wrong message of any celebrity or politician.
How Can We Respond Curb to The Problem?
Both parents and social media influencer have their role to handle the problem. Before the situation gets worse they should realize their responsibilities and roles. They must be aware of what they are doing and should focus only on good things. If not taken care of the problem in time then the future of these children is at risk.
As a parent what you should do is: Parents ought to have frank discussions with their children. It is the duty of parents to make their children realize that what actually is happening in the real world. And aware their children about the influencers marketing world.
As Social media influencers, they should be careful of what they are posting and promoting in public. It is okay to promote the product that they enjoy and suggest. But before doing so they should keep in mind that there are children who are following in their footsteps. And for every wrong step can directly affect children mentality.
Conclusion
Summing up, social media and social media influencers have both positive and negative impacts on kids’ brains, it is up to kids how blindly they trust influencers. It is totally ok to follow influencers, in fact, you can learn many things from them, but you should not trust them completely.
After all, it is their profession and they are getting paid for products they promote, hence sometimes they even fake reviews and tell their audience false information.
