Why Influencers Have Chosen to Step Away From Social Media
By Movieguide® Contributor
Young people all over the world dream about becoming an influencer, but some internet personalities have left that life behind in order to live a normal life.
Ingrid Nilsen was just 20 years old when she started her YouTube channel in 2009. She made videos for 11 years, racking up over 3 million followers. However, she soon started to feel like she needed to make a change.
“As I kept vlogging more, I realized that sharing the mundane parts of my life were actually the things that I needed to keep for myself,” Nilsen told NBC. “It made me, as I got older, want to pull away because I wanted to figure out who I was, and I was trying to figure out how to do that on the internet.”
The former YouTuber said her “big moment” came in 2020.
“I thought to myself, ‘I can stop. I can stop doing this now,’” she explained.
Nilsen made a farewell YouTube video and left the influencing life behind. She now runs a candle business and says doing something “tactile tactile is absolutely therapeutic coming off of the internet.”
Nilsen isn’t the only influencer who has realized influencing isn’t the dream job many people make it out to be.
Lee Tillman stepped away from social media as well, citing a desire to be “normal.”
“I soon felt like a billboard which, in a way, was how I made my money,” she explained. “But I started to feel like it wasn’t about me anymore…and that’s when I started to think ‘What would it be like if I was just normal?’”
Today, Tillman leads a workshop on how to stop living the life of an influencer, which quickly sold out.
Nilsen and Tillman aren’t the only public figures who have chosen to step away from social media. Movieguide® previously reported on why actresses like Jennifer Aniston and Emily Blunt stay away from social media platforms:
Major Hollywood actresses like Jennifer Aniston and Emily Blunt don’t use social because of the pressures to perform.
“It feels like we are losing connection. I think we’re losing conversation,” Aniston (MURDER MYSTERY, FRIENDS) said to InStyle.
Aniston also contemplated what social media does to youngsters.
“Childhood is such a vulnerable time, and I’m sure a part of me believed all that they teased me about. Thankfully, I didn’t have a phone or social media to look at and think, ‘Oh, I’m not this, I’m not that.’ I just wanted to have fun and play capture the flag.”
Like Aniston, Movieguide® Award-winning MARY POPPINS RETURNS actress Blunt said in an interview with Vanity Fair, “Social media has changed the landscape so an encounter with you is valued more as a social-media currency than a genuine interaction.”
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