The Celebrity Sensation Takes Over

Their presence is ubiquitous. Any newly discovered information about them is disseminated across the country within seconds. Americans nationwide feed off of “news” about these people who are so pervasive in society, yet affect our own lives very little, these people we call celebrities.

Celebrities are consuming more of our lives than ever before. Every media platform is teeming with their personal lives, drama, scandals, and gossip. Television programs, magazines lining the checkout aisles of grocery stores, Facebook, Buzzfeed, online blogs, YouTube, radio talk shows, you name it, stories about the latest celebrity hot topics are more than available—they are practically unavoidable.

The increasing number of outlets of celebrity news is fueling our obsession. We spend so much of our time scrutinizing celebrities and discussing their lives as if we actually know them. Our obsession has grown so intense that we are living vicariously through famous people instead of engaging in our own personal interactions, nurturing our relationships, and sharing our experiences, emotions, and opinions regarding current events.

With the huge advancements in mobile technology, we now have access to celebrity updates in our pockets and at our fingertips. Regardless of location, we can always use social media sites, such as Twitter, to track what our favorite celebrities are doing, which creates a false sense of intimacy. This closeness breeds our desire to blindly follow their advice and turn to them as our role models.

Companies are exploiting our obsession with celebrities by using them to tell us what to purchase. Brands place the celebrities we adore in their advertising campaigns, encouraging us to buy the clothing and shoes they wear, beauty products and perfumes they pamper themselves with, cars they drive, and lattes they drink. The consumer buying process is becoming less and less about making informed purchase decisions and more about popularity and celebrity trends.

However, consumerism is not the only aspect of society where the majority of Americans lack proper knowledge to make informed decisions. When we spend so much of our time ogling over celebrity drama, how can we allocate enough time to educate ourselves about the politics and events occurring in the U.S. and around the world? The simple answer: many people don’t. They let politics take the backseat in their lives, preferring to watch a video of Miley Cyrus twerking than local news reports. With all the problems our country and the world faces—climate change, economic malaise, terrorism, and more—why do we care so much about celebrities?

Our focus on celebrities over political leaders is evident on social media platforms. Twitter is an extremely useful outlet to quickly and easily spread information to a massive audience, not only for celebrities, but also political leaders. Disappointingly, the reach of celebrities and politicians on Twitter is hardly even comparable.

Reasonably, if an American only knows one political leader, it is the president, so it makes sense that President Barack Obama has 63.4 million Twitter followers. Sadly, it also came as no surprise that pop-sensation Justin Bieber has 66.9 million Twitter followers, more than the President of the United States. Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift also comes close with 62.7 million followers. Other celebrities who rack up followers include musicians and actors Justin Timberlake (48.5 million) and Jennifer Lopez (33.4 million), the icon Kim Kardashian (34.8 million), and athlete LeBron James (23.4 million). 

           In comparison, the White House Twitter page only has 6.89 million followers and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has 4.13 million. Other political figureheads’ follower-counts are only in the thousands, such as Vice President Joe Biden (907,000), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner (854,000), and chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke (47,600). This discrepancy is a large indicator that we have our priorities in the wrong place.

If our misallocated time and priorities do not seem like a big problem now, think again because they have huge implications for our future. Today, children grow up constantly connected to the Internet and learn about celebrities at a young age. These children comprise a new generation whose childhood dream is to be a star on reality television, rather than President of the U.S. This vision of the future is a disturbing one, unless we can concentrate our attention on more important aspects of life, instead of clouding ourselves in blissful ignorance and drowning in celebrity gossip.