The Impact of Social Media: Influencers, Income, Information

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Social media is defined as websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. Although social media creation was aimed at innocent fun while communicating with others, it has impacted our society more than anyone could have ever guessed. 

A More in Depth Look at the Meaning of Social Media

Social media has created a whole new career called "influencers", it has developed new ways to earn income, and it is one of the main ways people now get their information, which leads to a lot of misinformation spreading.

An influencer is a content creator who posts on social media platforms. There are TikTok influencers that are also Instagram influencers, and there are some people who focus on one platform as well. 

When I think of the original "influencers" I think of YouTubers. Although YouTube was not the first form of social media, people began to get fan bases off of the content they made on the platform. 

For example, one of the first major YouTubers PewDiePie, who now has 111 million subscribers, started his channel in 2010, and quickly gained a fanbase. 

How to Get Famous on Youtube

As more social media platforms were created, more and more influencers were famous. Before TikTok, Instagram was the platform that created the most successful influencers just by posting pictures. One example of someone who got famous off of Instagram is Gigi Hadid, whose modeling career started because of the photos that she posted on Instagram. 

Gigi Hadid Taking a Selfie for a Photo Op

Since the development of the app TikTok, thousands of influencers have come out of the platform with very successful careers. You can also become an influencer through Twitter or Facebook, but must influencers are now "made" within TikTok and Instagram.

As I mentioned before, social media has created completely new avenues of income. 

Of course, influencers can get income from creating content. Influencers can get money from social media, but they get the most of their revenue from brand deals. Also, once influencers blow up on one platform, they will make accounts on all platforms possible to ensure that they are not missing out on any income. 

Emma Chamberlain Paid Partnership Instagram Post

An article on businessinsider.com by Sydney Bradley covered how much money influencers make. Influencers can make money on Instagram through commissions on affiliate links selling merchandise and DTC products, and monetization tools. One influencer who spoke with Insider made an average of $5,000 per month in 2020 through affiliate links alone.

More Information on how Much Influencers Make

The income of influencers depends on how many followers each one has, as well as how many brand deals they do. 

Influencers are not the only ones making money off of social media. YouTubers can hire editors to edit their videos for them, businesses hire people specifically to advertise on social media platforms, famous people get publicists, managers, makeup artists, and the list can go on and on.

Although these impacts (influencers and income) of social media make it seem like it has a positive cultural impact, it is definitely not all sunshine and rainbows.

Influencers can create a false reality for the people who view their content, and being an influencer is not always a stable career option considering the job relies on people liking you.

The Negative Effects of Social Media Influencers

The worst impact of social media, however, is how much misinformation is spread on social media platforms. And with all of the crazy world events that have happened within the past two years, social media has misled almost everyone along the way in some shape or form. 

For instance, a lot of people posted misinformation about the Covid-19 virus throughout the peak time of the pandemic, which is very dangerous considering how many fatalities the virus has caused. A very common lie that was spread was that Covid is just like the common cold, and that was all over every social media platform for weeks.

Also, when people started questioning the effectiveness of masks, people began to post blatant lies explaining that masks do not work to stop the spread of the virus.

A Tweet From Scott Atlas Donald Trump's Former Advisor

Social media platforms have also had a huge role in creating conflict within our society. For example, during the 2020 election period, people constantly argued over social media, and every time I logged into a platform such as Instagram I would see people arguing in a post's comments.

Ultimately, social media has had an extremely significant impact on our society, through the faces of social media known as influencers, the new avenues of income, and the amount of lies that are present on each platform, social media has definitely impacted everyone in some shape or form.