Peddling influence

I've been haunted by a disturbing article in the New York Times about parents who post their children's photos online and then attract sexual predators, which is appalling enough, but the detail I can't get out of my head is the claim that one-third of preteen girls want to pursue careers as online influencers.

I have questions! Most of them, though, place me firmly in the Old Fuddy-Duddy category, like "How do preteen girls even know what an online influencer is? Aren't their parents monitoring their internet usage?" But no, the article points out that at least some parents encourage their children's online presence, seeking to open doors to careers in modeling or acting or influencing.

But how can so many kids think online influencer is a viable career goal? It's like a pyramid scheme: the more influencers, the fewer people available to be influenced. And why don't the children aspire to be astronauts or doctors or writers or scientists or teachers?

All those careers can lead to immense influence. I mean, how many of us can point to a particular book that changed the way we think about the world, or a particular teacher who encouraged us to pursue a field of study? How many people my age watched the moon landing and were inspired to pursue careers in math or science? Maybe they didn't all become astronauts, but they may have learned a thing or two along the way and developed the skills to contribute something meaningful to society.

What will a child learn by pursuing a dream of being an online influencer? Maybe some marketing skills or effective camera angles? Help me out here! Is there really a crying need in our culture for even more young people excelling at the fine art of self-promotion?

I confess that I would like to have more influence than I do. If I could encourage more students to care deeply about the power of storytelling or the cultural value of poetry or even the effective use of the semicolon, I would feel that I've contributed something that might bear fruit long after I'm gone. But if online influencers keep influencing young girls to pursue careers as online influencers, we'll soon be so up to our eyeballs in influencers that we'll have no one left to be astronauts or doctors or writers or scientists or teachers.

But then I am an Old Fuddy-Duddy. Maybe someone can explain to me how to solve this problem, because I don't think I'm the right person to influence the influencers.