influencers Archives - 2020 Parenting

Picture-perfect food, beaches, boats, vacation photos, selfies… All of these flood social media. They portray a perfect life – that no one possesses!

The pressure to look and feel perfect is higher than ever before. Everyone can fake their lives. And shove it in everybody else’s faces. You know all of this isn’t the real truth. But does your adolescent?

Most Influential: Social Media

There’s your child, scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or any other social media platform. They find numerous accounts and pictures of people with perfect bodies at perfect places posing perfectly. Celebrities and influencers getting paid to post picture-perfect content.

But do you compare yourself to these images? Doesn’t it make it easier to see the flaws you have? Young girls and boys are extremely susceptible to this. Phys.org reports “teens who reported posting more pictures on social media, had a heightened awareness of their appearance, which was related to feeling more negative about their body.” The more time a teen spends online, the more likely they are to have a negative body image.

But you and I know the pictures that flood social media are unnatural in pose and quality. No one has perfect skin or a perfect figure. “Fitspiration” accounts, designed to promote one fitness expert over another, can influence adolescences to create unhealthy eating habits and extreme exercise regimes. Fashion models post about their “everyday” life and young minds tend to wonder why their life is not like that. The standard that is being held up to your child is unrealistic. One natural outcome is bad feelings about their body, and shame.

How to Help

There is help out there. Psychologytoday.com offers an acronym to help teach your child about this aspect of the media.

F.A.C.E.

F – Filter out content that makes them feel negative in anyway.

A – Avoid letting them spend all their time on social media.

C – Careful of comparing others lives to how their life is going.

E – Evaluate what the differences are between real and fake photos.

It is important to teach your children that real life is not supposed to look perfect. Real life is beautiful in its own, unique way. It is different for everyone. Being comfortable with the way you look with today’s Internet is hard. However, for your child’s sake, teach them that everyone is perfect in their own way, on both the inside and outside.

Links:

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-reveals-selfies-teenage-body-image.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smart-people-don-t-diet/201902/teens-body-image-and-social-media

Are Instagram “influencers” influencing your kid

https://www.decodingtodaysyouth.com/is-your-tween-spending-too-much-time-on-youtube/

We’ve already taught you what an influencer is (https://www.decodingtodaysyouth.com/what-is-an-influencer-and-whats-it-got-to-do-with-your-tween/). Influencers are either celebrities or ordinary people who are paid by a company to promote its products on social media.

Maybe what you don’t know are all the harmful products and practices that are popping up on your teen’s social media timeline as a result.

The big player in this game is Instagram. It works well for the influencers (and companies) because of its flashy pictures and cleverly worded captions. It screams “if you use this product, you too can have an Instagram profile as flashy or a body as perfect” as this person.

Well, Instagram recently released some news. And this going to 100 percent affect your kids.

Soon you and your kids will see more influencers that you aren’t even following. That’s because soon brands will be allowed to promote their influencers’ posts and project them onto the screens of the young and impressionable.

In a way, this is nothing new. Instagram already has sponsored posts that show up on your feed in between pictures of your friend’s cat and your coworker’s beach vacation. But now these will be labeled “paid partnership.”

Hey, we know you’re already worried about the kind of material your kid/pre-teen is taking in when they spend hours upon hours in front of their cell phones. So here’s a quick list of some products and ideas that have shown up on your kid’s timeline because of influencers.

Flat Tummy Tea

As the name suggests, this company wants you to believe that by drinking this tea, you will lose weight quickly and easily. A few of the Kardashians have come under fire lately for promoting this product. The company sells lollipops, shakes, and supplements as well as tea.

At this point, many experienced social media users know that Flat Tummy Tea is not only not effective, but it’s dangerous and unhealthy, but these are high school and college students. Younger kids may not be up on this kind of promotion. I think the products either “curb hunger” or “help with digestion,” which means to me maybe they make you sick.

Many influencers don’t actually try the product. They just post a picture with a caption that the company told them to include. Read more about Flat Tummy Tea’s Instagram empire here.

See also: any product that claims to be healthy while making you cut weight crazy fast.

YouTuber Logan Paul visiting a Japanese suicide forest

Yes, you read that correctly. Logan Paul posted a YouTube video of himself in the Aokigahara. This is a forest in Japan where many people go to take their lives. Regretably, he showed a body he had come across while filming.

To make matters worse, he kept the same attitude of his other videos and made jokes along the way. If you want to read more about it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/01/02/youtuber-logan-paul-apologizes-for-showing-body-in-japans-suicide-forest/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b3cd12d5162e.

Using natural disasters to gain or keep attention

When wildfires broke out in California, many influencers took to social media to send “thoughts and prayers” to those affected.

While the captions might have matched the situation, some of the photographs definitely didn’t, such as selfies or perfectly posed, professional photographer pictures. It was a way for the influencers to stay on top of a trending topic while also gaining likes from being “sympathetic.”

So what can you do?

Research. If your teen wants to buy something that they saw promoted on social media, do your own investigation before purchasing. Look up reviews. If it’s something that will be ingested, like a supplement or diet tea, check the ingredients and find out what’s really in it. Also, look for any possible side effects.
Talk. Ask your kid what kinds of things they’re seeing on social media. How do they feel about them? Do they think the influencer actually uses the product or just gets paid to post about it? Open up the conversation so they know that those influencer reviews aren’t always truthful or thorough.
Be present on social media. Not in a snooping way. But it won’t hurt to make your own account just so you know what’s going on in that social media universe. Follow news stations. Follow celebrities. Get a glimpse of what your teen is seeing on their screen.

Here are more helpful links:

What is an “influencer”? And what’s it got to do with your tween?

Is Your Tween Spending Too Much Time On YouTube?

Can the Internet be a Positive Thing for Your Tween?