Falling Short

They post pristine photos of their travels, pets, kids, meals, and workout routines for millions of followers —but Instagram influencers don’t always tell the whole story.

WORDS Laura Peppas

It starts off innocently enough.

A quick scroll provides a welcome escape from a hectic day. An artfully presented meal here, an exotic destination there. A humorous meme worth tagging, a quirky gender reveal.

Then things get murky. A six-week postpartum mother showing off her six pack while her baby writhes in front of her on the change table. An airbrushed tween pouting in a bikini. A fitness model spruiking the effects of a diet milkshake.

The comments flood in dutifully.

“#bodygoals.”

“This is exactly how I want to look.”

And so begins that sinking, sickening feeling, signalling the love/hate relationship with the multibillion dollar industry of Instagram “influencers.”

The question is, is it all innocent marketing, or doing us more harm than good?

WHEN INSTAGRAM LAUNCHED in 2010, it was predominantly focused on users sharing their personal snaps. It didn’t take long for marketers to sniff out a golden opportunity: the photo sharing network’s visual nature and beautifully curated feeds made it ideal for showcasing products.

According to general manager of influencer marketing agency Hypetap, Chris Morfis, the connection between marketer and influencer began to take off in 2013; three years after the app’s launch.

“Locally, Garry Pepper Girl and Margaret Zhang were among the first to make the transition from blog to Instagram and hit the million follower mark,” Chris says.

Today, we are in a “mass adoption phase” of influencer marketing in Australia, where social influencers have the ability to reach large audiences—challenging traditional media—and an engaged audience that advertisers have never been able to reach so quickly. The industry is projected to generate as much as $10 billion by 2020 and as of June 2018, the platform had one billion users worldwide.

“Brands are doubling their spend on influencers’ activity year on year, driven by the sophistication of influencer platforms and agencies’ ability to supply brands with up-to-date data and projections for campaigns,” Chris says.

At their best, influencers can provide a welcome getaway from the chaos of life, raise awareness on topics that need addressing, and offer users sound advice. They can exist in almost any category—from travel, food, beauty, fashion, lifestyle and even pets.

There are “mega” influencers like @taramilktea (1.2 million followers) who travels for a living, while “mid tier” influencers such as @notsomumsy (205,000 followers) posts idyllic images of herself and her children, usually in collaborations with fashion labels. Often, the clothes she spruiks will be sold out within hours.

The more successful influencers can produce enough income to make it their full time role, earning anywhere from $500 to $45,000 (and beyond) per static sponsored post. A good estimate for most influencers is about $100 per 10,000 Instagram followers for each post.

It’s a serious business, with many influencers admitting they spend hours agonising over the perfect shot, including styling, set up and selecting and editing images. Often professional photographers are involved, however, it’s not unusual to see a devoted partner hanging off the edge of a table to nail that perfect snap.

So what makes an influencer successful? A good follower base and excellent engagement are musts, but Chris cites trust as a “major factor.”

“If an influencer doesn’t have that trust with their audience and followers, then they won’t be as successful,” he says.

“Influencers are consumers themselves and have every right to share their truthful experiences with a product. Consumers truly trust the judgement of influencers and look to their recommendations as a guide for purchasing decisions.”

But when that trust is put in the wrong hands in a largely unregulated industry, the consequences can be dire.

Case in point, when celebrity chef Pete Evans told his 200,000-plus followers that directly staring at the sun was the “best form of free medicine.” Later, he came under fire for spruiking a bone broth for babies to drink (which led to a rush of medical experts warning parents this was extremely dangerous.)

Then came the uncomfortable looking waist trainers sported by glossy-haired influencers, in a bid to get a desired “tiny waist to hip ratio.” Again, users were warned the corset-like garments caused serious damage to internal organs.

Then there are the influencers caught out for lying about having glamorous lifestyles—essentially selling a life that doesn’t actually exist. Rapper Bow Wow infamously posted a photo of a luxury car parked on an airport tarmac in front of a private plane with the caption: “Travel Day. NYC press run for Growing Up Hip Hop. Lets gooo.” Humiliatingly, eagle eyed Instagram users later traced the photo to a stock image.

Last year 18-year-old social media influencer Essena O’Neill called out the “inauthenticity” of the platform, deleting 2,000 photos from her account and changing the name to “Social media Is Not Real Life.” She then re-captioned many of the remaining photos to reveal the “truth” behind them.

In one photo of herself sporting a tiny bikini and impossibly toned stomach, Essena changed the caption to read: “took over 100 photos to make my stomach look good. Would have hardly eaten that day. Would have yelled at my sister to keep taking them until I was somewhat proud of this. Yep so totally #goals.”

In another, wearing a long white dress with a dramatic low cut back, Essena reveals she “didn’t pay for the dress, took countless photos trying to look hot for Instagram, [and] the formal made me feel incredibly alone.”

She warned users to “be aware of what people promote, [and] ask yourself what’s the real intention behind this photo?”

IF SO MANY people are unable decipher the genuine from the inauthentic, one can only imagine how it is affecting younger minds.

Research published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture found that compared with other social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, Instagram appears to be more taxing on our brains, especially when it comes to the ways we compare ourselves to everyone else while using it. The study also found that the more time people reported spending on Instagram, the more anxious and depressed they felt.

A telling social experiment by fashion photographer Rankin titled ‘selfie harm’ saw teenagers handed an image of themselves and asked them to then edit and filter until they felt the image was ‘social media ready’. The experiment found the teens were mimicking their idols, making their eyes bigger, their nose smaller and their skin brighter, all for social media likes.

“It’s just another reason why we are living in a world of FOMO, sadness, increased anxiety, and Snapchat dysmorphia. It’s time to acknowledge the damaging effects that social media has on people’s self-image,” Rankin said.

If so many people are unable decipher the genuine from the inauthentic, one can only imagine how it is affecting younger minds.

Twelve-year old Olivia Baker has a private Instagram account with more than 700 followers. She follows “lots of beauty and dance-related accounts” and spends about two hours a day on the app, a limit set by her parents.

The most popular photos she posts are often the ones of herself, either selfies or shots taken by friends.

“I do imitate poses [by Instagram models] of just, 'the serious look', but I also like to have poses that express myself as well, like, funny poses, but I like to post it so people kind of understand a little bit more about who I am,” she says.

“But it does make me feel good when I post a photo of myself in a pretty pose or something, and people then comment something like ‘how are you so gorgeous?!'.”

While she can see plenty of positives to Instagram, Olivia can also spot the less endearing qualities.

“I think the Instagram community is mainly just people trying to look the best they can be, and I don't think there's enough photos or videos of people being themselves,” she says.

Likewise, Rankin believes the pressure we put on ourselves to present a perfect image of who we are is phenomenal, and not healthy.

“Having flaws has become frowned upon and people no longer want to embrace their freckles or smile at their laughter lines, instead choosing to erase all sight of them,” he says.

“It’s dangerous. Mix this with the celebrities and influencers flaunting impossible shapes with impossible faces…and we’ve got a recipe for disaster.”

IN THAT WORLD of impossible faces and six-packs, Canberra’s Lauren Dubois is a breath of fresh air.

For one, she doesn’t particularly like the word influencer. But with more than 20,000 followers and a recent book deal based on her Instagram captions, she’s certainly influential.

There’s a marked difference between her and many other high-profile influencers, given she isn’t afraid to show the less glamorous side of life.

Posts range from tantrums to her lying on the floor, bleary eyed, in an attempt to settle her children.

The majority of comments she gets are “I was thinking exactly that,” or “thank you for saying this out loud”.

An ex-journo turned parenting blogger, she launched her blog The Thud at the end of 2014, when her first-born was about 15-months-old.

“My goal has always been to show the lighter side of parenting, by sharing all of my ridiculous failures and frustrations,” she says.

“I’ve always aimed to show other parents that we are all the same. We love our kids, we try really hard and sometimes it all falls to shit but we get up and try again.”

Her followers began to “ramp up” over the past 12 months or so, particularly since the ‘stories’ option launched on Instagram, where users can see short videos or images lasting 24 hours, offering a more realistic glimpse into influencer’s lives. Lauren says this has made things “much more personal.” While the static posts can are usually aesthetically pleasing, stories offer the ‘other side’, from a pile of dirty dishes to being stuck under snoring babies.

“Before stories, people only got your curated images and carefully written words,” says Lauren.

“Now, people get to see your life as you’re living it. As soon as I started speaking directly to the camera, people started engaging so much more because I’m talking to them, not at them. They’re with me in my home, watching my day and talking directly to me about what I’m saying. It’s so much more intimate and it creates a pretty strong bond.”

She’s aware of other “mummy influencers” who skim over the messy diapers or vomit, instead choosing to paint an idyllic image of motherhood.

“I’m certain these women don’t intend to harm anyone, and many of them see it as their creative outlet to style beautiful photos in a neutral colour palette, but I wish they knew how hard they make it for some mothers out there who look up to them and punish themselves trying to live up to this unattainable ideal,” she says.

“They feel so much self-hatred because their lives don’t look like that and their kids don’t act like that and they can’t afford houses like that. It can lead to some really self-destructive thoughts and actions.

“People will spend money they don’t have trying to dress their children in bespoke linen rompers and handcrafted leather moccasins when really, their kid wants to wear $3 Kmart shorts they can run around in and get dirty in because linen rompers are uncomfortable and a bitch to keep clean.”

Lately, companies are turning to micro influencers such as Lauren—influencers with smaller, more responsive followings—to sell their products, due to the fact that “mega” influencers are expensive and often disconnected from their audiences.

Lauren says she is “selective” with any sponsored posts and will usually only work with companies that are already part of her everyday life, such as Big W and McCafé.

“I don’t put much stock in follower numbers anymore. Follower numbers can mean very little in terms of ‘influence.’ What people need to be focused on is engagement,” she says.

“You can have someone with tens of thousands of followers but if no one is engaging with their content, they have no influence, they’re making no impact. But someone with a few thousand followers who hang off every word, who like and comment on everything, that person is far more likely to make an impact.”

THERE’S NO DOUBT that influencer marketing is a rapidly growing industry. But with so many fish in the pond, will we eventually reach saturation point?

Chris says as more data becomes available around influencer reach and impact, their growth will only continue.

“The increasing in popularity of influencers is leading to them becoming more informed on how to create a brand-safe environment,” Chris says.

“Influencers are becoming so recognisable that we’re now seeing brands use them as ambassadors outside social platforms. These influencer-first celebrities will challenge traditional pathways to fame, moving into mainstream TV, movies and music.”

If audiences and ambassadors are indeed becoming more informed in authenticity, we can only hope it will see a rise in influencers like Lauren, who aren’t afraid to “tell it like it is.”

“There’s so much on the internet that’s designed to make us feel bad about ourselves,” Lauren says.

“We’re constantly told how we should be doing things, how grateful we should be, how selfless we have to be, that we have to juggle all the balls and never, ever complain about it. We feel guilty all the time. I like to think I’m over here waving the flag for Team Mum. People know I’m on their side.” •