Watching a teen influencer’s Get Ready With Me, it’s hard to imagine what is going on behind the scenes. Even if they are mentally suffering, empathizing with their challenges can be difficult due to the fact that they present a much different life on screen.
“It’s hard to think that [influencers] might be struggling deep down since online, they seem to have so many friends and resources and really great lives,” sophomore Anya Taylor said.
The major thing viewers seem to forget about teen influencers is that they’re kids, not adults. When influencers grow up with eyes on them constantly, issues with self-perception and personal identity will inevitably grow in tandem with their follower count.
Piper Rockelle, for example, the golden girl of late-2010s YouTube, has amassed a fanbase of over 18 million since launching her YouTube channel at only eight years old. Growing up, she was constantly body shamed by both her family and online critics — she was a prepubescent child repeatedly labeled as overweight by everybody in her life.
“If a teenager has millions and millions of followers, that’s a lot of pressure, and if their parents aren’t around to monitor what they’re doing or help them navigate hate comments, that [hate] will become [internalized],” Anya said.
Rockelle’s experience is not an anomaly, but rather a consistent, worrying pattern amongst child influencers. Ashley Barnes went viral at 14 years old after posting a powerful monologue speaking about her experiences as a sexual assault survivor. Within two to three months, she was one of TikTok’s most prominent and beloved mental health influencers.
“[Barnes] didn’t really have the opportunity to live her life or be a teenager without being defined as a mental health influencer,” Anya said. “She tried to promote mental well-being, but at the same time, that kind of deteriorated her own mental health.”
It’s a bit ironic that Barnes went viral for talking about her experiences as a sexual assault victim, because in the summer of 2025, three years later, she ended up going viral once more — this time not as a victim of assault, but as a perpetrator.
“The culture and lifestyle of being an influencer kind of consumed her, and she forgot what she stood for along the way,” Anya said.
Barnes’ experience shows that influencer culture can turn teen influencers’ genuine desire to help others into the opposite when their developing brains and mental health are left to the influence of the masses.
Rockelle’s experience shows that, due to the unrealistic standards influencers are held to, underage influencers cannot navigate their child and teen years without violating the heavy expectations of fans and critics alike. Adolescent influencers are at a stage in their lives when they’re exploring who they are, yet they are held to
unbelievably high standards.
Rockelle, now 18 and wanting to take her life in a new, unexplored direction, is forever expected to stay the sweet kid her followers know and love, even though growing up is an inevitability of life.
“People [are] having a harder time letting my childhood go than me … [and] I think that’s understandable, but I’m not going to be a kid forever,” Rockelle said in an interview with Rolling Stone.
Teen mental health influencers, however, are expected to be overly mature, despite the fact that they are only children, and this standard has the potential to compromise their own mental health. Yes, it’s important for children to have role models, but not at the risk of the role model’s own well-being.
Children are not the only people watching the content of these influencers. When videos of children are published, they are accessible to anybody and everybody. While these adolescents can absolutely be powerful role models for young children, it’s important to remember that older demographics are watching their content with much less innocent intentions.
In the Rolling Stone interview, Rockelle asked, “If you’re looking at [my content] in a sexual way, why are you looking at it in a sexual way?”
When children grow up with their every move broadcast and scrutinized, support systems become more necessary than ever. It is not their duty to protect themselves; that is where their guardians must step up.
