Influencer: Idol oder Manipulator?
Urs Kiener, Kinder- und Jugendpsychologe bei Pro Juventute, über Bedeutung und Gefahren von Social-Media-Influencern.
What role do influencers play in the lives of young people?
With the onset of puberty, parents, previously the undisputed role models for conveying values and attitudes, radically lose influence. Young people then prefer to base their decisions on their peers. Many influencers belong to this age group.
How do you explain the success of influencers?
For example, Anja Zeidler, a 24-year-old trained hairdresser, is followed on Instagram by around 340,000 mainly young women. Young people simply lack experience and a sense of achievement. Influencers such as Anja Zeidler can then serve as behavioral models whose recommendations can be used as a guide and provide a certain degree of certainty when making decisions.
Are successful influencers idols, role models or - as the name suggests - influencers, even manipulators?
A star is surrounded by an aura of aloofness and "untouchability". He moves in different spheres to us mere mortals. With Anja Zeidler, however, I have the impression that for many young people she embodies the young, likeable and successful woman next door. She communicates with her followers in a very extraverted way, but at eye level and addresses problems that other young women also face. In this sense, she is a role model or low-threshold advisor. The numerous commercial product advertisements in the social media appearances of all successful influencers have a manipulative effect - like all advertising.
Influencers generally embody a beauty ideal of flawlessness, slimness and attractiveness.
Does this put her followers under pressure? It is possible. The omnipresent portrayal of a supposedly perfect life on social media platforms is one of the main causes of psychological pressure among young people. Many people feel insecure when they compare themselves with the flawless self-portrayals of others. Influencers are possibly the tip of the iceberg that characterizes communication in social media in general.
