In the days of yore (read: last year), I entered college as a bright-eyed marketing student. My time in the school of business was limited to a humble semester before I became overwhelmed by my newfound inability to escape advertisements, even in an academic setting.
Our world is permeated with promotion. My issue with modern-day advertising is that it’s inescapable: product placement in our favorite TV shows, undercover sponsorships on social media. We retreat to the media for escapism, but advertisements follow. Social media has taken the worst hit — platforms designed to make content creation accessible and authentic now exploit the young women they initially lifted up.
Early advertisements consisted of posters in a town square or flyers in newspapers. Their beauty was their simplicity: viewers were given the necessary information about a product or service, and there was no effort made to hide the fact that advertisements were just that.
In the centuries since, corporations have begun rapidly encroaching on consumers’ livelihoods: billboards, TV commercials and now social media. Aside from obvious ads on brand accounts and influencer sponsorships, there are now subtler methods of promotion, primarily affiliate links and User-Generated Content.
Through affiliate links such as TikTok shop, content creators earn a small part of commission (around 10%). Anyone can set up these kinds of links, without needing a brand to reach out to them first. It’s as simple as buying a shirt off of TikTok shop, wearing it in a ten-second lip-sync video and adding a link so viewers can easily find it. The accessibility of affiliate links means that people can get desperate for monetary compensation and beat them to death, posting a whole lot of nothing at the chance of being seen.
I also have a bone to pick with User-Generated Content (UGC). Brands send out casting calls online, offering payment to creators to fabricate entire accounts dedicated to undercover advertisements. One person may stage hundreds of videos “catching” their partner cheating through a certain app, and viewers are none the wiser. Although the admins of these accounts are being paid, they get repetitive incredibly fast and feel reminiscent of a pyramid scheme.
UGC and affiliate links are both types of native advertising, which appear in the same style as nonpaid content. Word-of-mouth is the most effective form of promotion, so it makes sense for companies to imitate that kind of image. However, once viewers realize they’ve been duped, they’re even less inclined to engage – I, for one, feel downright cheated.
Aside from being deceptive and annoying, the increase in sponsored content and native advertisements spreads exploitation to audiences of young girls. Social media has inspired younger generations, particularly Gen Alpha, to copy the “get ready with me” content popularized by influencers. This content format hinges not just on the process of getting ready (a girlhood staple reminiscent of doing makeup with your friends before a party) but on the products themselves. There’s a pressure to always have the latest greatest item, for the girls both creating and merely consuming content.
Even girls whose parents keep them off the internet aren’t immune. If their friends at school all have the Serum Of The Week because Influencer Of The Month loves it, that pressure to consume still exists. Young girls don’t need anti-aging things or athleisure sets they’ll outgrow in a year, but they feel that they do because corporations want them to make purchases. And in an attempt to fit in, because that’s what young girls do, they’re only furthering the cycle.
In an ideal world, there would be successful, universal legislation requiring all forms of advertising to be clearly disclosed. Since we don’t live in an ideal world, it’s up to us as individuals to remove ourselves from the picture as much as possible. I find that by disengaging from social media and regulating my brain in small doses, I’m better able to sift through the mountains of outside information I’m presented with on a daily basis.
In short: remember that on the internet, anything can be an advertisement. And if you’re stressed out about every scroll being manufactured, take it from me and just log off. Your brain will thank you.