This was a great read, thank you! For my own daughters, I am adding a third item I refer to as social media hygiene. I plan to teach my kids how to curate their feeds so that they see content tailored to their needs/likes rather than generic drivel that tends toward pretty-privileged content. For example, by being super diligent about where I click or hover and what I watch, I can avoid diet content and stay in the anti-diet space even though the diet content is 100x more click-bait worthy.
Social media hygiene- yes!!! Your daughters are lucky to have you. Seems like all teens could benefit from learning to avoid content geared at eroding their self-esteem. Thanks for reading!
Influencing is hell. Constant content capture and edit, community moderating, abusive crazies in your DMs, obsessing over analytics. I briefly knew an early days IG model. She was gorgeous, affluent, sweet - and nearly cracking from the pressure. No enjoyment of all that youth and privilege. Your existence is work. I wish kids saw the grind and neurosis of it. It’s ugly and deeply dehumanizing. Most make less than $2k a year.
This was a great read, thank you! For my own daughters, I am adding a third item I refer to as social media hygiene. I plan to teach my kids how to curate their feeds so that they see content tailored to their needs/likes rather than generic drivel that tends toward pretty-privileged content. For example, by being super diligent about where I click or hover and what I watch, I can avoid diet content and stay in the anti-diet space even though the diet content is 100x more click-bait worthy.
Social media hygiene- yes!!! Your daughters are lucky to have you. Seems like all teens could benefit from learning to avoid content geared at eroding their self-esteem. Thanks for reading!
I love that! I write about training the algorithm in Sexism & Sensibility and now I wish i’d called it social media hygiene.
Influencing is hell. Constant content capture and edit, community moderating, abusive crazies in your DMs, obsessing over analytics. I briefly knew an early days IG model. She was gorgeous, affluent, sweet - and nearly cracking from the pressure. No enjoyment of all that youth and privilege. Your existence is work. I wish kids saw the grind and neurosis of it. It’s ugly and deeply dehumanizing. Most make less than $2k a year.
It is so good to expose this! A seductive industry that is incredibly damaging.
So well said! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻