The Sydney Morning Herald has released an online article regarding the dangerous consequences of young people being thrust into global fame via viral clips on YouTube.
Asher Moses mentions:
Child psychologists and online reputation experts are sounding the alarm…They warn that although today’s kids can achieve global celebrity status with just a few mouse clicks, flying too close to the sun could see them end up like young Icarus – plummeting back to Earth to a reputational death.
Moses appropriately seeks word from the Kids Helpline who claim that the realisation of being in the media creates a rise in anxiety among young people. What best sums up the notion of the article, however, is a quote included by Kimberley O’Brien, a prinicipal child psychologist at Sydney’s Quirky Kid Clinic, that young people may be fine in the short-term, but it is the long-term effects which are worrying:
“In the short term they’ll gain status amongst their peers, they’ll gain recognition and power that they may never have experienced before. But in the long term of course there will be consequences as adults – they may not want this recognition to follow them around as they mature.”
The major example in the article is that of Rebecca Black, 13, who earned US $40 000 from her YouTube music video clip titled “Friday”, despite its high ‘dislike’ rating. Moses goes on to explain her rise to popularity is largely attributed to poor singing and lyrics and that in a recent TV interview, she mentioned she felt she was being “cyber-bullied”.
Moses refers to Casey Heynes and Ritchard Gale whose fight in a Sydney high school was captured on a mobile phone and went viral, where the boys, particularly Gale, now have garnished a negative reputation for themselves and their school. He also refers to the young woman at the centre of the AFL photo scandal, who now has a large Twitter following under her real name, and the 16 year-old NSW girl whose open party event attracted more than 100 000 requests on Facebook.
Kids Helpline General Manager, Wendy Protheroe, says:
“The young person for a while basks in the glory and thinks it’s lovely and then realises that there’s a downside, and the downside can be the loss of privacy … it can be a total loss of control of their own life and that’s a very scary thing to go through, if you feel like you’ve lost control of what’s happening to you.”
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