COMMENT: Social media influencers are great - for the right influencing

TWO words at the top of every email always triggered the delete button.

Dear influencer.

It didn’t matter if the following paragraphs promised a week in the Bahamas or an interview with a Beatle, I’d never know. The email got binned.

Childish snobbery took hold. Authors are not social media influencers, a distinction I’ve tried to impress upon my daughter, with a spectacular lack of success.

A few years ago, I watched as my prepubescent offspring went giddy as she realised we were sharing a room with a couple of members of the YouTube group Wah!Banana. Beatlemania had nothing on her delirium. When I enquired what the attraction was, her appalled look suggested I’d asked about the attraction of breathing.

“They’re the biggest social media influencers in Singapore,” she said, with a wide-eyed reverence one might typically keep for a chance encounter with Barack Obama.

I met Wah!Banana. They were annoyingly lovely. I mumbled something about my job “writing books” and they reciprocated with a smiley “good for you” attitude that I would’ve used with my grandmother whenever she reached the kitchen without falling over.

We were worlds apart. Content creators of a different kind. I wrote humorous social commentaries and crime thrillers that tackled contentious moral issues – for peanuts. And social media influencers made taste-test videos for potato chips – for millions. (I may be guilty of a slight over-simplification here.)

Attractive career path for children

But my daughter was hooked on influencers, no matter how trite the subject matter seemed to me. I’d catch snatches of dialogue, things like “these Pringles are totally saltier than the other tube” and grown men saying things like “this toy is more fun for younger children”, giving the impression that my kid was watching junk food-addicted perverts.

Then I read that families of “kidfluencers” can earn up to $20,000 for a single post promoting a few toys. So I bought a load of plastic crap at Toys R Us and stuck my little girl in front of a ring light for a year.

I didn’t really. Ring lights are expensive. I let her find her own way. She made videos for fun, not for an audience and certainly not for money, highlighting the new things in her life whilst using a hybrid accent that was half Buangkok and half Boston (if the influencing doesn’t work out, she might have a career in local radio.)

And then BookTok happened. A community of book lovers listed their favourite reads in TikTok videos and generated 30 billion views. My daughter now reads a novel a week. Every major bookstore has a dedicated BookTok section. The publishing industry received a vital jolt and social media influencers, in my completely objective opinion, are the modern wonders of the digital world (thanks, guys, for propping up my analog world.)

BookTok is no different to Greta Thunberg’s environmental videos, or Twitch for gamers, or the online groups for the vulnerable and marginalised who need safe spaces for each other. They are all positive forces for good in a messy media landscape. My daughter is welcome to try them all. Besides, I’m not sure I could stop her if I tried.

According to a 2022 Vox report, “influencer” is one of the most attractive career paths for children and adults. A Morning Consult poll indicated that 54 per cent of Americans aged between 13 and 38 would become an influencer if given the opportunity. And almost a third would rather follow Charli D'Amelio’s dancing footsteps than Billie Eilish on stage or Emma Raducanu on a tennis court. A Harris Poll study of 3,000 kids discovered that in both the US and the UK, if choosing between a teacher, a professional athlete, a musician, an astronaut, or a YouTuber, nearly 30 per cent ranked YouTuber as their top choice.

I get it. Kids copy. They want the products, dance moves and lifestyle choices on screen. Influencers offer the promise – or illusion – of a fantastical existence, where one gets paid to endorse the latest gear. There’s an element of control, perhaps even a democratisation of the marketing process. Everybody gets what everybody wants.

From Booktokers to Twitch gamers, a sales pitch is tailor made for a captive audience. It’s a direct, organic connection between seller and buyer. They joined the same community, freely and willingly. What’s not to like?

Guiding young influencers to produce right content

Well, let’s start with the sexualisation of teenage influencers and the misogyny that lurks around these platforms like the weird, pervy kid who can’t get a date on prom night.

Singapore Twitch star Denise Teo recently commented on the “lewd comments” she receives, despite her gentle persona. In the UK, social media analyst Emily Hund has noted that the influencer industry has a predominately female workforce. Those at the top tended to satisfy stereotypical beauty ideals.

Of course, sex has always sold. When I was a teenager, the top-shelf porn magazines were the must-glimpse attraction for every three-legged male. Today, the social media generation has OnlyFans, which originated in my hometown of Essex (naturally). It was set up by a man (naturally) and is now a billion-dollar business owned by a Ukrainian-American (naturally).

OnlyFans is used primarily by sex workers. They are the content producers, suggesting the circle is now complete. Social media influencers began by opening tubes of Pringles. Now they open tubes of personal lubricant.

Defenders of the internet porn subscription service point out, fairly, that the creators are paid up to 80 per cent of the fees. Sex workers are taking control of their own labour. But it’s controlling the content’s dissemination that’s a problem. OnlyFans creator Titus Low was jailed last year for uploading obscene photos and videos, after one of his videos was found on a 12-year-old girl’s phone.

At 12, my daughter was making innocent lists on BookTok. Oh, we’ve come a long way haven’t we?

But the issue remains the content’s reach. Magazines were not all evil because of a handful of top-shelf titles called Big Busty Buxom something – the exact names escape me, but they were always heavy on the alliteration – and social media influencers are not doing the devil’s work because an obscene video reached a 12-year-old girl. It’s not the platform, just the access. It always was. (Though the content could be kinder.)

Denise Teo appears to be doing it the right way, making inclusive videos and treating viewers with kindness. Her success shows that surveys related to the industry often pose the wrong question. It’s too easy to ask kids if they want to be influencers. Maybe ask what kind of influencers they want to be.

Young people can speak directly to their peers and influence vast audiences like never before. What a precious opportunity. Why not use it for good?

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.

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