A note on the issue: Baby influencers with big ideas

The middle of May was the halfway point of the summer holidays as a child, when trips to the local library and video rental store increased as the days seemed to stretch longer and we needed more books and films to fill the hours. For “kidfluencers”, or tween and teen influencers, though, slow lazy summer afternoons are unimaginable. These are children who work hard on their social media presence, creating short videos on make-up, fashion, books, films and science for a large and demanding online following.

Also read: Schooling children to be mindful content creators

While Pooja Singh meets the “ baby influencers” gaining a following for their beauty and fashion reels, Avantika Bhuyan takes a look at the workshops aimed at preteens wanting to improve their social media presence. She also talks to doctors and counsellers about the mental health toolkit that both child influencers and their parents may need. The parents claim to control these social media pages and though they as well as their children sound like they have worked out the delicate balance between fun and money, fame and stress, it’s hard not to consider the long-term impact on the mental well-being of children who are, essentially, growing up to likes and shares. 

The child influencers’ point of view may be different, but their audience and their aim is the same as any other influencer—adults who have the power to make them go viral. And yet, in a generation that was born into social media, it’s equally hard to say they should not be influencers or content creators until they’re old enough to vote. We have three stories that delve into this dilemma that Gen Alpha and their parents face.

Another good read this week is film writer Aditya Shrikrishna’s story on the web series landscape in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada on OTT platforms, which has not taken off the way content in Hindi has. Complement it with Uday Bhatia’s column about the difficulty of finding the best of world cinema in India. And as always, there’s a range of reading to do—from whether you should switch to smart locks for your doors, to beetroot’s new place on the gourmet’s table, to books and shows to put on your list.

Write to the Lounge editor shalini.umachandran@htlive.com 

@shalinimb

Also read: The lives of India’s baby influencers