The Morality of the Influencer Community on YouTube.
By: Obscure Travels
Tags: YouTube, Social Media, Feminism, Female Role Models, Influencer Marketing

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

One Saturday morning I was watching one of my favourite YouTubers. I have followed this lady for about three years, watching her channel grow and her content improve. I was super happy for her when she finally reached the 100,000 subscribers milestone on the platform. However, she posted a video about how YouTube would not give her the play button that creators usually receive when they reach this milestone.

This particular creator transitioned from being a blogger to a YouTuber and once worked as a nude model (art nude). Early on in her YouTube days, she received a strike on her account for showing a minor amount of nudity (I think she showed a little boob or bum), something that is against YouTube policy. Her audience, I would say, are mostly men and women over 30, with a lot of comments on her videos coming from an older audience. She does not promote products, nor does she get paid to influence her audience. If anything, she promotes being a strong and independent woman.

I agree that it is an important requirement for YouTube to have strict guidelines over what is allowed on their platform, and understandably, certain nudity should not be allowed. However, from my research, there are far worse things that children can see on YouTube than a little bit of a ladies bum.

Whilst scouring the platform for female influencers. I came across two creators, both in their early 20s, each with over 7 million subscribers. Looking at their viewer demographics, I found that the majority of their audience is minors, the remainder is teenagers and girls in their early 20s. Despite their audience demographics, these influencers are allowed to post content on the platform that encourages binge drinking and making drinking games look like fun. Yet, they have all their play buttons and no strikes against their accounts.

I then looked at the videos made by another female influencer. Again, she is in her early 20s. Her channel came up as a recommendation because I had viewed the other two channels. Her vlogs contained information about sex, contraception, drinking and weight loss. Again, her demographic was young and impressional girls. Despite being an attractive young lady, her content was about her own negative view of her body and how she needed to lose weight, have her teeth straightened and, on yeah, she had body dysmorphia, I had no idea what that even was. At this point, I was getting quite annoyed. How can this be acceptable content for an adolescence audience, I thought? Moreover, why is it OK for one creator to speak negatively about the female body, yet, another creator, that celebrates positively the natural beauty of it gets penalised?

From my viewpoint, it appears that YouTube likes to keep the larger channels happy, regardless of their content. After all, they are how YouTube makes its money. Perhaps if I were a teenager or in my early 20s, I would think differently. However, as a 30 something female, I have already lived through times when I never felt skinny enough, hated my spotty skin and was body-conscious. I thought that all the creams and pills promoted in magazines would improve my life and make me feel better about myself. None of them ever did. Influences are only doing the same thing that magazines did ten years ago. However, YouTube is available to a much wider audience. Back in my youth, you needed money to buy magazines, today, the internet can be accessed for free, just go and sit outside Starbucks.

Moreover, perhaps it is unbeknown to younger audiences that the majority of their favourite YouTubers are paid to make them want to buy the stuff that they promote. These influences are millionaires, pay for personal trainers, dieticians and dermatologists to make them look the way they do. It is not the £5 cream they are trying to influence their viewers to buy that makes them look the way they do.

But what can be done? At the moment, not much. We sadly are living in a world where, even the government use social media influencers to promote common sense across the masses because, for some reason, the public will listen to them over a doctor! Hopefully, in the future things will change and this is just a phase in our culture. However, in the meantime, I do think YouTube needs to tighten their reigns on some of the larger creators and more closely monitor their content.