Are Social Media Influencers Skewing Our Perceptions of Reality?

The 19th-century debate on the effects of the internet has for long been made redundant not because of the silence or fall of the internet age, but due to a refinery of technology that has birthed new avenues, baptised in the digital age as social media. The advent of social media platforms has fabricated digital beings who function under the title of influencers.

The actions perpetrated by these digital beings on the digital territory have caused many to wonder if these people with technological clothing were human beings guided by moral principles before wearing the uniform and title of digital influencers. This worry is pertinent because their actions in most instances are anomalous to the general axioms of nature.

It is based on this consistent observation that the argument in this 21st century has shifted from the effect of the internet to the consequences of its products called 'social media influencers'. As a direct consequence of such observations, many keep asking the salient question of 'Are social media influencers skewing our perceptions of reality?'

In an attempt to accost this issue, I will digest for you the meaning of the following terminologies: Social media influencers, perception, and reality. From there, we will delve deep into the actions of these personalities which have attracted and caused many to raise the trending question.

Beginning with the definition of these terminologies, social media could be defined as internet-based applications and websites such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok that enable users to create and share content and engage in social networking.

An influencer is an individual with the power to affect the purchasing decisions, opinions, or behaviours of others due to their authority, knowledge, position or relationship with an audience.

From the above definitions, one can say that social media influencers are people who use internet applications like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to exercise knowledge, authority and relation with a huge audience to cause a change of decisions of the mindset of others.

Perception on its part is the ability to see, and reality is construed as the state of things as they actually exist rather than as they appear or are imagined.

Having received the meaning of these terminologies, we can now comfortably ask, are social media influencers changing our reflection of normal life patterns?.

In order to address this issue, we will look at the characteristics of influencers in the first part and the effects of influencers' activities in the second part. Let's begin with the characteristics of social media influencers.

Characteristics of Social Media Influencers

--Trust and Authenticity: They are often regarded as experts in specific fields like fashion, gaming and travel and are trusted more than traditional advertising.

--- *Content Creation:* They build a following by creating engaging and consistent content.

A) Types by Audience Size

-- Mega Influencers: over 1 million followers, e.g., celebrities

-- Macro-influencers: 10,000 to 100,000 followers

-- Nano Influencers: up to 10,000 followers, often with high engagement.

2) Role in Marketing: Companies pay them to promote products through a practice known as 'influential marketing'. It should be noted that influencers are not limited to digital spaces; they can be anyone whose opinions are respected, including industry experts, journalists or content creators. Now that you know the characteristics of influencers, let me take you to the effects of their influence on our society.

Effects of Social Media Influencers

It is safest to lay the foundation that the influence of influencers is both positive and negative. Let's begin with the positive.

(A) Positive Influence

Education: There are few influencers who use their platforms to create awareness on the causes and prevention mechanisms of certain societal ills like environmental degradation, mental health issues, general health and relationships.

Some of them sensitise their followers on civic rights and duties, how to build healthy relationships and how to build and grow business and careers, etc. Though these positive aspects of just a few social media influencers are laudable, the majority have taken negative influence as their hobby. Let's take a glance.

(B) Negative Influence

Fake Beauty: The majority of the female social media influencers sell an illusion of beauty as they use filters from high-quality cameras which make them appear beautiful. From this deception scheme, they proceed to introduce a product which they purport can make one beautiful in 24 hrs or 3 days, when they themselves aren't as beautiful as they portray.

Many of them have pimples and black spots on their faces they have been struggling to erase for years, but they sell a fake perception by making our young girls understand that it's so easy to wipe out black spots, and they will proceed by selling at cutthroat prices.

Even with the general knowledge that such processes take a bit of time, some can't be erased by products but by healthy dieting; some gullible girls always fall prey to their manoeuvres.

Get Rich Quick Propaganda

Still on female influencers, the majority of them propagate the get-rich-quick syndrome by flashing cars, businesses and travels abroad in business class seats or private jets.

They claim this wealth portrayed was acquired within weeks, a few months or two years of social media activeness, which is rewarded by founders of applications, who they claim reward them through the process of monetisation.

While some of these ladies are braggarts about making tens of millions from views and likes within a month, they consciously or unconsciously instil a fake perception of reality in our young girls, who abandon the small business or career they had started to pursue millions from content creation within months.

The good thing is that most of them get to realise that such stories aren't real or do not reflect reality, which has an already settled pattern for success: hard work and consistency.

They discovered that most of the female influencers bragging about overnight success get it through advanced prostitution, which they do behind the camera.

What about male influencers? Most of them deliver a fake perception by narrating on podcasts the millions they make from content creation within a very short period of time. Many of the youths who have been lured into such artifice discovered they are not true; that many of them are scammers, some are into the drug business or cultism, while others connect young beautiful girls to rich men who will deflower them and give them money as commission agents.

I could go on and on, but permit me to end here and ask you again that from the above points raised, whether positive or negative, do you think social media influencers are skewing our perceptions of reality?

By Marks Abaiko

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