Influences Matter

Who's in your orbit? Teaching has reinforced something that I've long considered a simple truth: the people we surround ourselves with or listen to matter; stated simply, influences matter. During a recent lesson with a group of young students, I asked them what influencers they listen to. This class self-reported using TikTok as their primary social media source. Although I do not have a TikTok account, I am vaguely familiar with the platform, and I realize that, like many social networks, its algorithms have a tendency to show us more of what we like to see as it learns from viewing habits. 

My next question was, "What influencers do you watch?" This is where things became more interesting. Many of the young men in this class reported watching Andrew Tate videos. I'm a bit jaded as I have never watched a Tate video; I've only seen clips from news articles I have read about the Tate brothers. With this disclaimer out of the way, I'll continue. I asked what they thought about the things they heard in these videos as I was trying to understand why "Top G," as they referred to him, was this great of an influence on these impressionable young minds. Although I couldn't glean anything profound from their responses, I reminded them to think about what these influencers were saying and their influence on them. 

This experience opened my eyes to the potential threats posed by messages promoted by 'influencers' on platforms such as TikTok. While I'm not going to go into detail regarding the various controversies surrounding the Tate brothers, I'd encourage you to google them and come to your own conclusions regarding whether or not you'd want your children to watch the content created by these 'influencers'. 

Seeking to repeat what had become an unintentional quasi-social experiment, I asked another slightly older class what influencers they listened to. While this class gave a much more varied list of answers, the Tate brothers were once again named. As we discussed various influencers and their respective fields of influence, I decided to ask a few follow-up questions when we discussed the brothers. I asked students to indicate whether they thought the Tate brothers were a "mostly positive or mostly negative" influence. I gave each student a red and green card, and I asked them to display the red side of the card to indicate that they believed the brothers had a net negative influence or to display the green side if they believed they were a net positive influence.

Surprised but not shocked, I was even more intrigued by their responses as they used their queue cards to indicate their opinion. The results were unanimous along a gendered divide; all of the male students reported having a net positive perception of the brothers, whereas all of the female students indicated having a net negative perception. 

Although I don't typically write a report (here's the presentation) detailing how I conducted a lesson, I was intrigued by the reaction of multiple classes to this activity.