The social media effect

Instagram has offered young people the chance to use their popularity and influence to all kinds of advantages that involve making money, creating content that’s fun or entertaining and entering careers like modelling, unconventionally.

Women who are Instagram influencers have the ability to inspire young girls on the platform but also, probably unintentionally, put pressure on young girls to live up to ridiculous beauty and lifestyle standards.

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I spoke to four young ladies, Kailin Wiggett (Thomas Moore College), Lonwado Tshalata (St Mary’s DSG), Andani Mashige (Thomas Moore College) and Diteboho Motlohi (St Mary’s DSG), who all use Instagram on a daily basis and they gave me their opinions about the good and toxic aspects about influencer culture and how it has impacted their self esteem and how they view their peers.

Kailin said: “There are pros and cons to social media, but I do believe that women are losing their self confidence by watching influences on Instagram. They try to make themselves look like the influencer they follow and even when they reach that point, they’re still not fulfilled within themselves. Although it’s good that influencers can share ideas and express their feelings, it can still have a negative impact on their followers.”

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Lonwabo said: “It depends on how you use social media because I’ve never aspired to be a influencer but I do look at the content sometimes and I get inspired to take a selfie like my favourite influencer.

And, I doubt myself when it doesn’t look the same and I start doubting my lifestyle, but it’s important to remember who you are and that influencer is only showing you a small section of their life.”

Andani said: “There’s pros and cons to this and I think the pros are: influencers can inspire their followers to be a bit more healthy and expose them to nice skincare routines but it can also add to insecurity issues for girls and with our peers it can become competitive with us wanting to look like certain celebrities and it’s a problem when that expectation isn’t reached.” Diteboho: “It obviously depends on who you consider a influencer.

There’s the standard ones like Kylie Jenner and the other Kardashian’s but there also influencers that people find and actively want to emulate them and what they post. But it can give girls inspiration because, yes, the standards are incredibly high and unrealistic but it’s inspiring how these influencers generate their own wealth and it’s good to see strong women doing that.”

As inspiring as women influencers can be, it’s hard to ignore the toxic affect they can have on their young followers who already deal with a lot of societal pressure.

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