SOCIAL MEDIA + SUSTAINABILITY

In the recent years, the social media world has grown rapidly reaching over 3 billion active users today. This has led to social media not only being a form of interaction and content source but now a tool of marketing for businesses, which is called digital or social media marketing today.

Influencers are another thing that has evolved from social media. These people have the ability to impact someone with their decisions for lifestyle, interest, purchases, etc. The number of influencers has become so big now that many of them have bigger platforms of followers than most brands on the media. Influencers are mainly focused on a specific niche, for example lifestyle, beauty, travel, fashion, and many more! Now in these categories still lays a rise for competition between the community because brands are now paying these influencers to promote their goods or services.

SOCIAL MEDIA

IN A SURVEY CONDUCTED BY FORBES, THEY FOUND 78% of consumers decisions in purchas ing are affected by the companies social media

The great thing about influencers and working with brands is that they create such a close relationship with their audience who are interested in the particular niche the company is in, but that can get carried away as many of them rely on the pay from these brands which can result in these influencers just taking any job they get. These jobs could be promoting goods or services that they do not know about, they do not support, they do not believe in and even some that

SOCIAL MEDIA + SUSTAINABILITY

Photograph, own work © Samantha Ting, 2020

"if you want TO LEAD, be THE VOICE people like you NEED TO HEAR - Ashley Chymiy.

they know themselves is not good for our environment. With the power of being an influencer, it is also very easy to start trends. Thaese could be a photography trend, fashion trend, beauty/ makeup trend and more!. Many brands will identify what these trends are and will produce goods or services for consumers so that more people could take part in the trend. For example, many of us would know about the animal print trend, fast fashion brands would mass produce clothing garments that are animal print so that they could reach the racks in no time for their consumers to purchase them and continue the trend. Mass production has many negative side effects on the environment, but in cases like these when demands are so high, many brands do not take account for the side effects.

Out of the thousands of influencers on social media, it is still shocking to see only such a small fraction of the community with a niche and passion of sustainability. Which affects their interaction on their platform and messages they want to say to their audience.

@best.dressed aka Ashley

1.4M followers on Instagram 3.23M subscribers on Youtube 89.6K followers on Twitter

Ashley is one of the most influential slow fashion influencers on the media today. Using her platform to express her passion for sustainable fashion as she makes countless of videos promoting ways to upcycle clothing and doing thrift flips. She shows her audience many different ways of making simple or old clothing to trendier pieces on the market for a really cheap cost AND good for the environment.

@mylifeaseva aka Eva Marisol Gutowski

7.5M followers on Instagram 11.1M subscribers on Youtube 4.8M followers on Twitter Eva is a fashion, beauty, lifestyle and travel influencer, living the life that we all want at only the age of 25. With more than 8 years living as an influencer, she is taking turns to the direction she wants to go forward in with her platform; which is sustainable fashion. In 2019, she released her clothing brand “Its All Wild” providing clothes that reflect the current culture of fashion in society with a deep concentration towards detail & sustainability.

Social media has also been a very great platform to spread awareness on sustainability which some companies are doing. Some Instagram accounts such as @diet_prada who looks out for fashion brands and exposes the truth from them. Such as any calling out copied designs, cultural appropriation, fails, and any other deeply hidden secrets some recognisable brands may have. The Instagram account with more than 2 million followers, including Zendaya, Gigi Hadid, Bella Hadid, Kaia Gerber, Emily Ratajkowski just to name a few, provides more transparency into the fashion industry.

Other Instagram accounts such as @fash_rev, @styledsustainable, @thesustainablefashionforum uses the platform to spread more awareness of sustainable fashion to influence an audience one at a time. In ways such as, sharing OOTD’s that are all sustainable, posting key words and the definitions, facts on the industry as well as starting movements that are aimed to make a change.