#BTEditorial – Influencing for good or evil ?

A mature Barbadian Facebook user recently remarked on the seemingly negative effect of social media influencers, lamenting that the word “influencer” used to be associated with something positive.

Our readers who may not spend most of their time hopping from one social media platform to another, may not be aware that Barbados has its own growing community of influencers.

Some of these “popular” men and women operate with worthwhile intentions. They offer their own brand of commentary and perspective to current affairs or lifestyle issues.

On the other hand, there are others who live a more colourful existence. They are prepared to do anything  just for the ‘likes’ and ‘followers’. They have little regard for matters of public decency and respect for established norms.

The more followers and traction they can generate, the more their egos are boosted and, if their fan base is sizeable enough, they can even generate revenue from the platform hosts.

Essentially, they live in the virtual world where the rules governing order and the terms of engagement are often blurry.

We are painfully aware that the lives of many Barbadians have been ruined and some forced into hiding by one well-known “influencer” or “blogger” who is quick to blast tips, half-truths and sometimes deliberate lies and “hit jobs” on targeted individuals.

There are no checks, no verification of information, no opportunity for those targeted to rebut or respond.

Then there is another category of influencers who project that their lives are perfect.

They have the perfect home, the perfect body, the perfect social life. But it is often an illusion, as pictures are filtered and digitally manipulated to remove flaws. The posh backgrounds are usually rented accommodation or staged.

But those who follow them on social media, intrigued by their every move and posts, fail to appreciate that this virtual world they are mesmerised by, is make-believe, short-lived, and often-times dangerous.

Since the establishment of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tik-tok and others, academia and researchers have been studying the impact of social media on our lives and specifically, on our young people.

Nicol Macijauskas, writing in The Teen Magazine also questioned whether influencers were here to inspire. Addressing the impact on teenagers, she pointed to the influencers’ world which appears to be paradise, and this often sends young followers spiralling into depression and feelings of low self-worth because they cannot seem to attain the trappings or imitate the lives of their influencers.

“The truth is that people only show the sides of themselves they want the world to see, they want you to see how beautiful they look after a breakup, how amazing their recent vacations were, and to show off their clothes that you just can’t afford.

“And even then, we must speculate whether the side they’re showing is even true at all, that it’s not just some fantasy they conjured up in order to fulfil their ego.”

Macijauskas  adds: “Influencers are affecting us: with the rise of social media, we’ve become a generation that is image-obsessed, ready to give up when we haven’t reached our dreams like ‘so and so’ has. We feel like failures, prepared to yield at any roadblock we encounter.”

But many of these influencers have also fallen because of their make-believe existence. Over the past three years many young influencers across the world have committed suicide as the pressure of their public persona and their private existence, tragically collide.

Here in Barbados, we have seen the demise of a few of our influencers, some to violence, others from legal entanglements.

Our challenge today is to seek to extricate the vulnerable, including our children, from the lifestyle and attraction of the influencers. We want them to be critical thinkers about what they read and view on social media.

We want them to exercise a healthy dose of cynicism about a range of information being peddled on the Internet.

And with companies paying influencers to promote their products, political parties also using influencers to sway public opinion on any number of issues, there is no guarantee about the authenticity of anything you read and view from most social media influencers.