The mental health toll of being an influencer

I was recently in Anaheim California for Vidcon, the biggest social video creator conference of the year. I create YouTube and Instagram videos for STAT, so I’ve been to Vidcon a few times as an attendee. But this year I was struck by how much of the conference’s programming was dedicated to the mental health of content creators. I’ve covered the mental health implications of social video consumption in a previous STATus Report. But I was interested to hear more about the mental health of the people who put themselves out there on social media, often with audiences numbering in the millions. In this week’s STATus Report, I speak with Andy Neal, an Instagram creator whose life was transformed overnight when a video he posted suddenly garnered tens of millions of views. I also chatted with Shira Lazar, a content creator and the founder of Creators 4 Mental Health, an organization that advocates for better mental health protections for content creators. 00:00 Intro 00:54 Meeting Andy Neal at VidCon 01:13 The viral post that changed his life 02:28 Andy's mental health advice for creators 03:41 Meet Shira Lazar, Creators 4 Mental Health 05:08 The scale of the creator economy 07:29 The data: burnout and anxiety 09:41 The Creators' Bill of Rights 11:57 Can therapists understand creator life? 13:16 Where the industry goes from here 16:07 Outro More from STAT: Become a subscriber: https://www.statnews.com/stat-plus/ Watch Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Statnews Newsletters: https://www.statnews.com/signup/ STAT events: https://www.statnews.com/stat-events/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/statnews Twitter: https://twitter.com/statnews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/status_report_ig/ Flipboard: rb.gy/3xnsxr STAT Reports: https://rb.gy/rexfwj STAT eBooks: https://rb.gy/eme3h5 ABOUT STAT: Founded in 2015, STAT is a global digital media brand that focuses on delivering fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about the life sciences industries to over six million monthly site visitors and an additional 20 million readers on the Apple News app. STAT takes you inside academic labs, biotech boardrooms, and political backrooms, casting a critical eye on scientific discoveries, scrutinizing corporate strategies, and chronicling the roiling battles for talent, money, and market share. With an award-winning newsroom, STAT provides indispensable insights and exclusive stories on the technologies, personalities, power brokers, and political forces driving massive changes in the life sciences industry — and a revolution in human health.