Alexander P. Schouten

While influencers often aim to promote positive behavior among their followers, growing concerns emerged about unintended negative consequences of their content, both on an individual level (social media users and influencers) as well as a societal level. This chapter examines three key areas of concern: (1) the harmful effects of influencers on followers’ physical and mental well-being, (2) influencers’ roles in shaping public discourse, and (3) the adverse impacts on influencers themselves. First, we examine how influencer content can harm followers’ physical and mental health, particularly through unrealistic body standards, promotion of unhealthy food, and upward social comparison—especially among young women. Mental health risks include increased anxiety, depression, and addictive behaviors linked to parasocial relationships and compulsive platform use. Second, the chapter addresses influencers’ impact in the public sphere, highlighting how they contribute to the spread of misinformation, political cynicism, and drive activism. Misinformation is often amplified by the perceived authenticity and trustworthiness of influencers, complicating efforts to distinguish fact from fiction. Finally, we briefly consider the well-being of influencers themselves, who face cyberbullying, antisocial behavior from followers, and the psychological pressure to maintain relevance and visibility. The rise of generative AI further complicates these issues by amplifying unrealistic ideals and misinformation. Taken together, the chapter underscores the need for greater awareness and regulation of the complex and far-reaching effects of influencer culture, both for followers and the influencers themselves.

It remains unclear whether online communication improves or diminishes adolescents’ social skills. While longitudinal studies favor improvement, they do not separate within- and between-person effects, which precludes causal interpretations. Moreover, few studies consider that communication with different people may have different impacts. This preregistered longitudinal study examined how the frequency of online communication with offline friends and online acquaintances (i.e., people known exclusively from the internet) impacts adolescents’ social self-efficacy. Survey data were collected from 2,500 11-16-year-olds (M = 13.43, SD = 1.70; 50.0% girls) over three waves (June 2021-June 2022) and analyzed with random intercept cross-lagged panel models. Contrary to the hypotheses, we found no evidence that changes in online communication frequency predict changes in social self-efficacy (or vice versa), regardless of the communication partner. Nevertheless, socially self-efficacious adolescents communicate more online, though only with offline friends. This implies that talking to online acquaintances is similarly accessible for adolescents with varying social skills.

Adolescents commonly use the Internet to communicate with their acquaintances. This study examines how social anxiety and depressed moods influence adolescents’ online communication – both its frequency and the level of self-disclosure. We propose that these relationships are mediated by adolescents’ preference for online social interaction (POSI), which helps explain the mixed results of previous research. Moreover, since the communication patterns may differ based on communication partners, we differentiate between online and offline acquaintances. Using structural equation modeling, we tested our hypotheses on survey data from 1,530 Czech adolescents (ages 13–18, 50.1% female). Our results suggest that while social anxiety is directly related to less online communication, indirectly, through higher POSI, it is related to more online communication. Notably, these associations are canceled out in communication with online acquaintances, but the inhibitions predominate in communication with offline acquaintances. Experiencing depressed moods is associated with more extensive online communication, both directly and via POSI, indicating that adolescents use online communication to cope with negative feelings. Theoretically, our findings support both the rich-get-richer and social-compensation hypotheses and suggest they are complementary. Moreover, they emphasize the role of adolescents’ perceptions of online communication within the social-compensation mechanism.

Detecting fraud during online exams using proctoring software comes with substantial privacy challenges. Previous work argues students experience heightened anxiety and have privacy concerns. However, little is known about which specific aspects of online proctoring cause these concerns. This study contributes such insights by using the Contextual Integrity (CI) framework to discover how students (N = 456) rate the acceptability of 1064 proctoring information flows with varying information types, recipients, and transmission principles. We find that the acceptability varies considerably depending on the context. Besides exposing obvious privacy violations, we find that, under certain conditions, students consider it acceptable to share data with teachers - despite their lack of involvement in proctoring. Also, the acceptability of sharing highly sensitive information - which should under no circumstances be shared - sometimes increases. We discuss the implications of these and other findings and provide concrete recommendations for educational institutions using online proctoring.

This study investigates individual- and community-level factors that affect how people use People-Nearby Applications (PNAs) to meet people in their local communities. We pose that individuals’ local social needs stimulate PNAs use, but that this relationship is contingent upon their neighborhood characteristics. A multiple informant methodology was used. 314 Italian and Dutch PNAs users answered an online questionnaire about their local social needs (bridging social capital, loneliness, sense of community) and their neighborhood social and environmental characteristics. Results show that community-related PNAs use facilitates users to meet their social needs when their local community offers opportunities for social interaction. When the neighborhood offers social places, the relationship between PNAS use and loneliness increases, indicating that in such cases people are willing to use PNAS to counter their loneliness. Furthermore, when neighbors are already more supportive, the relationship between sense of community and PNAS use becomes more negative, which may mean PNAS use cannot further add to a sense of community if the neighborhood already provides this; conversely, the one between bridging social capital and PNAS use becomes more positive. In sum, results show that PNAS use is related to local community experiences, albeit contingent upon the specific neighborhood characteristics.

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Successful conflict resolution is important in romantic relationships. With the advent of computer‐mediated communication (CMC), partners can resolve conflict using CMC. But is CMC as effective as face‐to‐face communication for conflict resolution? And does the effectiveness depend on attachment style? We asked 100 romantic couples to discuss a conflict topic and randomly assigned them to do so face‐to‐face or via CMC. Levels of distress, anger, and conflict resolution did not differ between face‐to‐face and CMC discussions. Attachment style did not moderate these findings. A more anxious and a more avoidant attachment style were associated with higher levels of distress and anger. We conclude that there is no indication that resolving conflict face‐to‐face has advantages over resolving conflict via CMC.

In their marketing efforts, companies increasingly abandon traditional celebrity endorsers in favor of social media influencers, such as vloggers and Instafamous personalities. The effectiveness of using influencer endorsements as compared to traditional celebrity endorsements is not well understood. Therefore, the present research investigated the impact of celebrity vs. influencer endorsements on advertising effectiveness (attitudes toward the advertisement and product, and purchase intention), moderated by product-endorser fit. Moreover, this research investigated two potential mediators underlying this relationship: identification (perceived similarity and wishful identification) and credibility (trustworthiness and expertise). Two experiments (N = 131, N = 446) investigated celebrity vs. influencer endorsers with good vs. poor fit with a beauty and a fitness product (Study 1), or a food and a fashion product (Study 2). Overall, our results showed that participants identify more with influencers than celebrities, feel more similar to influencers than celebrities, and trust influencers more than celebrities. In terms of advertising effectiveness, similarity, wishful identification, and trust mediate the relationship between type of endorser and advertising effectiveness. Product-endorser did not explain the relationship between type of endorser and any of the mediating and dependent variables. In all, our results show the added value of using influencer endorsers over celebrity endorsers and the importance of similarity, identification and trust in this process.