Commentary: YouTube stars make bad role models and it’s all our fault
SINGAPORE: For all the fears that parents accept about their children spending too much time on the internet on their smartphones, the news this week has highlighted ane threat that can be dangerous but is often ignored.
In the early days of web anonymity and the rise of chatrooms, the danger to wait out for was your teenager meeting up with a stranger who turned out to be a sexual predator.
More recently, parents worry their kids are giving out too much personal information online at a time when scammers and hackers tin can have advantage of them to steal their hard-earned pocket money.
But news this week spotlighting on YouTube star Logan Paul suggests the threat is non an evidently sinister effigy lurking in the shadows and waiting to strike.
Indeed, it might be more insidious, taking the class of a vivid-eyed, good-looking 22-year one-time adolescent who has amassed an enormous following and equally huge fortune over YouTube for his thoughtless antics.
IN THE NEWS FOR THE WRONG REASONS
With xv million followers on YouTube, Logan Paul was in the news for the wrong reasons this week.
Paul had posted a video he made showing an actual expressionless body hanging from a tree during his trip to Nippon. The video was seen by half dozen million viewers before it was deleted.
While he quickly apologised, information technology seems the problem with his actions had not really sunk in when he tried to explain his position.
"I may sympathize information technology's like shooting fish in a barrel to go defenseless up in the moment without fully weighing the possible ramifications", Paul said in his apology. "I exercise this s*** every day. I've made a 15-minute TV evidence EVERY Single Twenty-four hours for the past 460+ days."
Bad enough as it is, he really should have stopped right there but added in his reply: "I did it considering I idea I could brand a positive ripple on the Internet … I intended to enhance awareness for suicide and suicide prevention."
One might exist inclined to accept he had well-intended motivations for filming in a woods well known to be a identify many get to stop their lives.
Merely it's hard to believe and then when in the video, Paul was seen laughing off the encounter and asking his friends: "What? You never stand next to a expressionless guy (before)?"
Nosotros SHOULD HAVE HIGHER STANDARDS
Some say Paul's reaction in encountering a dead trunk was crass but ignorant, and the actions of an immature star who didn't know the right way to bargain with a difficult situation.
Later all, he did result a fuller, unqualified apology afterwards.
That may be so, but for an individual with a huge following of mostly immature, impressionable teenagers on YouTube, should we not have higher standards for these social media celebrities who our children watch each day?
And subsequently he has been chastised past many over the Net, what does he exercise? Blame it on his video workload and his supposedly good intentions.
Doesn't that suggest a willfulness in not accepting full responsibleness for the consequences of his actions?
A benign view of Paul is surely misguided, when his track record suggest that a more authentic estimation is a human being who has capitalised on his stardom to leverage pointless pranks and acts of daze for greater financial profit and personal proceeds.
Paul had in one case faked his own murder standing in front of a full-length window in clear view of young adoring fans – and and then posted it online.
This is a person whose videos frequently show him doing something mean-spirited (similar throwing a shovel total of snow onto his blood brother who was nonetheless in bed) or even dangerous (like clinging onto the side of a car every bit information technology moves at high speed).
And what was the point of him dressing upwards every bit Pikachu and throwing a huge pokeball at Japanese pedestrians in Tokyo autonomously from making a childish statement?
It seems curious that Paul has attracted millions of young viewers who seem to think his actions are nothing just a bit of harmless fun that they would like to vicariously live through. Where is the fun in tormenting other people or putting yourself in alarming situations no parents would wish their kids try out?
The fact that he has been dedicated past adoring fans suggest something even more troubling – that they have not only come up to see him as an engaging entertainer, but a role model to be admired and perhaps even emulated.
Do young viewers revere how much admiration from fans he has managed to amass, or the amount of money he seems to be making from doing nothing much apart from getting up to no skillful each day and filming it with his smartphone?
Worse, are kids aspiring to become YouTube stars as a substitute for hard work and a career that contributes to the betterment of gild? What does that say about what YouTube stars are doing to our kids?
HOLD MORE TO Business relationship
It is worrying that it took YouTube a full eleven days to reply, suggesting that at that place was even anything debatable virtually how morally bankrupt Paul's actions and his sad-not-sorry amends were.
Even then, they've only dealt him a slap on the wrist after cancelling his interest in a YouTube series but left his account active.
Where it has been widely admitted that YouTube's business model, driven by clicks, views and comments, has motivated users to mail increasingly shocking videos, should YouTube not exist held to account?
Paul isn't the just YouTube star to take done something questionable and gotten away scot-gratuitous.
Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, has posted videos where he mutters racist slurs and shows anti-Semitic images just all that has earned him are millions more subscribers.
Fifty-fifty more troubling is how many fans Kjellberg has glued to his channel where he'south often seen playing hours of video games and giving his loud, abrasive and sometimes obnoxious reactions – not quite a productive member of society past any stretch of the imagination, yet held up past his fans every bit being 18-carat, unfiltered and even charismatic.
Another YouTube star put on a pedestal is Zoe Sugg, better known every bit Zoella, whose most widely viewed videos are of her going through her shopping each day and squealing over why she loves each detail, or her demonstrating how to achieve the perfect smoky center await.
In a earth where immature girls are trying to find their ground, do we really want our kids to call back happiness tin can come in a shopping bag or through spending hours improving how deep-fix our eyes look?
PARENTS MUST BE BLAMED
It seems long exposure to social media celebrities is the i threat parents should exist concerned about only ofttimes overlook.
Might it be that parents are compensating to some degree in giving their teenagers liberty over whatsoever they choose to lookout man and thinking this makes up for the time they don't spend with them considering of a hectic career?
It is quite understandable even that sometimes busy parents desire nothing else but to come dwelling house and tune out instead of having to attend to familial responsibilities after a hard day'southward work.
But this trend is surely shaping our kids and turning them into the kinds of people that worship YouTube stars like Logan Paul.
The trouble is when parents don't look over what kinds of online entertainment and activity their kids go up to, never mind in the second instance whether they discuss when disturbing images and issues crop up.
Where many parents can be seen leaving YouTube channels to babysit their children over tiffin at the food court instead of sparing some quality time to engage them, at that place is no doubtfulness the root of the problem starts much before when our kids are still toddlers.
In this context, it's difficult to arraign Paul entirely for his deportment, much as they are reprehensible.
Perhaps nosotros should plough the spotlight instead on the parents of all those kids who back up him on YouTube for letting them brand an idol out of him.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/cna-lifestyle/commentary-youtube-stars-make-bad-role-models-and-its-all-our-fault-214061
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