Teens Trying to Become Social Media Influencers Are Compromising Personal Data

One of the newer kinds of careers that a lot of people are looking into involves becoming digital stars and influencer on social media. The main reason behind people wanting to try and become influencers has to do with the money and fame that can be earned. You can earn quite a hefty income if you take the job seriously, and it also has the benefit of providing you with an enormous amount of online as well as real life clout as well, something that a lot of people are searching for in this modern day and age.

Since becoming an influencer seems like a relatively easy gig that pays well and gives you social clout, a lot of teenagers are quite focused on trying to make their way to being able to get paid for their influencer posts. While becoming an influencer is a perfectly legitimate job and it is understandable that teenagers might want to look into ways in which they can become one as well, the fact of the matter is that the manner in which they are going about this process is a little dangerous because of the fact that it might just end up compromising their personal data in some way, shape or form.

How this will happen is that in order to become an influencer on Instagram you need to have a business account on the app. Hence, any teens that are hoping to become influencers are going to switch to business accounts, and herein lies the actual problem that has a lot of people worried about how they are going to try and protect the personal data of their teenage children.

You see, there are quite a few laws put in place to protect children’s data. Any teenager can post on Instagram freely without having to worry about the corporation attempting to acquire their data and sell it to advertisers for a large amount of money. However, these protections do not extend to business accounts. When a teenager opens up a business account on Instagram, chances are that they would end up posting a lot of stuff on this account, and all of the data available from their posts would be fair game for anyone involved.


Business accounts are professional only in name. Influencers have to make lots of posts each and every day in order to keep their followers invested in what they are up to. This means that your child is probably going to end up making a lot of personal posts on the platform as well, posts that are going to provide valuable data that bad actors would be able to exploit.

Business accounts also reveal contact details for the owners of the account. This is standard practice, but since teenagers involved there is a risk factor that might not be there when it comes to other people that may be trying to use these accounts. If a teen has a business account, anyone that does not have the best intentions in mind would be able to look up their contact details, therefore putting their general safety at risk in a manner that simply was not the case before.



Read next: Does Instagram really fight fraud as promised?
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