“Inspiring change? Making a difference, managing influence, and navigating change online” is this year’s theme for Safer Internet Day. As South Africa joins the rest of the world to celebrate this important day, many issues and topics related to safe internet usage in the country will be discussed and debated.

However, two issues related to child online safety still do not get enough attention. The first issue is the way in which content created by child influencers impacts their own mental health, their academic life as well as their privacy and safety. The second issue is the impact of the content created by child influencers on child consumers. Both these issues can no longer be ignored.

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While consumers often compare their lives and the lives portrayed by influencers, they may struggle with their self-esteem and academic focus. Among other issues, it is important to discuss how both influencers and consumers can ensure their safety and well-being in terms of mental health and academic life.

The way influencers live can affect their mental health because they feel pressure to show a perfect life leading to stress and anxiety because somehow, a perfect life is more likely to trend or go viral. At the same time, people who follow influencers might feel bad about themselves when they compare their lives to the seemingly perfect ones shown online. The addictive nature of social media also cannot be overlooked. Being addicted to social media either scrolling or creating content can make people feel stressed. When you spend too much time on social media, you might end up comparing your life to others’ lives. It can also make it hard to sleep if you are constantly on your phone and experts agree that sleep is essential to one’s general health including mental health.

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Being addicted to social media can also affect how we interact with other people outside of social media because of the lack of balance between online and offline. This then highlights the need to take care of one’s mental health by limiting what one has access to as well as managing the need to create content and trend.

Child influencer life can also impact the influencers’ and the consumers’ schooling. Influencers might find it hard to balance school and the need to be popular online, making it challenging to balance their online and offline lives. There is a great temptation for influencers to prioritise fame over studies. Followers, in trying to keep up with influencers, could end up spending more time on social media while neglecting their studies. The influence of influencers can affect how both influencers and consumers handle their academic life.

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Influencers also face the potential danger of over-sharing and sometimes find it hard to keep their personal lives private because many people want to know everything about them. It is important for influencers to manage how much they share online and to refrain from sharing personal information such as their locations or identifying information about their addresses. They also need to be wary of individuals who commit crimes such as cyber-stalking, cyberbullying, and catfishing. It is known that violence or abuse that starts online has the potential to escalate into offline violence or abuse. Therefore, influencers need to be cautious with what they share to protect themselves from offline violence such as sexual or physical violence.

If the impact of influencer life on child influencers and child consumers continues to be ignored, South Africa might end up having a generation of citizens with unresolved mental health issues and a citizenry that is uneducated as they would have neglected their studies as children. Both these have huge implications for the country. Therefore, these issues should be taken seriously. Both influencers and consumers need to protect themselves.

One of the best ways to ensure this protection is by making use of the different platforms’ features, especially one such as the ‘Daily limit’ feature on Instagram and TikTok which reminds consumers that they have been online for too long.

Another feature worthy of being mentioned is the ‘App timer’ which lets users set the time they would like to spend on a particular app including social media apps. Influencers and consumers can both use this feature to limit their use of apps, especially ones that are addictive and take them away from studies and other aspects of life.

Education is also very important for social media users whether as influencers or consumers. One must educate oneself on how best to protect themselves from not only social media ills but also how to protect their mental health and ensure their studies do not suffer.

To sum it up, the fact that child social media influencers exist and the fact that their influence on child consumers cannot be ignored; everybody must step up to protect both groups of children. All stakeholders from parents and teachers to civil society and government must come together to ensure that these children’s mental health, academic life and privacy and safety are big topics not only during Safer Internet Day commemorations but every day. Both the influencer and the consumer need this protection for their well-being and to safeguard the future of South Africa! DM

Edited by Lister Namumba.

Rofhiwa Matamboye and Gomolemo Pooe are Web Rangers. Web Rangers is a digital and media literacy programme designed to equip children (aged between 12-17 years old) with critical skills and knowledge that promote safe internet usage, combat cyber ills and disinformation, advocate for their digital rights and champion their rights in the digital world. To follow the work of Web Rangers, visit www.webrangers.co.za; www.hashplay.co.za; and WebRangersza on Instagram.