Ambidextr Media

At this moment, try listing some of the names of content creators or influencers you know of. If you ask another person to do the same, it’s possible that they can provide a list entirely different from yours. Some can even name a few content creators who are friends or family.

Content creation has been increasingly popular since the COVID-19 pandemic happened. Not so long ago, the people who we called “content creators” were relatively few we thought we already knew them all. But today, the digital space has become their breeding ground, with millions of people creating anything under the sun in an attempt to make a name for themselves.

While we try to adjust to this new aspect of social media, we can’t help but wonder what it means for us as consumers. 

The influx of content creators and the influence they brought across the internet has bracketed an important question: What do we do now that everyone is a content creator?

Defining content creators in the digital context

Identifying what exactly makes someone a content creator can be complicated.  To keep things simple, let’s go with a general definition. 

For Andrew Kemp, the Managing Editor of State of Digital Publishing, these are the people who create content to be distributed through any platform including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. With entertaining or informative qualities, their materials can be quite diverse, each having their own niche. Some examples of influencer niche are beauty, health, food, video games, and travel. 

Estimates of their population worldwide do vary, but we can expect them to reach millions. Why? Because part of the industry’s glamour is being able to earn money from it. In fact, this created a new economic landscape we call the creator economy. 

The creator-audience imbalance: possible or impossible?

In economics, there are producers and consumers. We can also say the same for content creation. The producers are those who produce content, whereas the consumers are their audience.

Picture this: what would happen if everyone decided to become content creators? Who, then, will consume their content? 

At its most basic level, if there are no more consumers left to consume goods, businesses would shut down. But we can’t say the same for the relationship between creators and their audience.

There is a clear distinction between their roles but it can also be interchangeable. People can be both at the same time and it’s very evident too. Just looking at the comment sections of these creators, you can also see their co-creators’ names blending with their followers. 

Even if they begin outnumbering the audiences, would it really matter since they’re also one?

What is left for us then? 

Our role now as users of digital platforms is to adapt to these ever-evolving changes. Looking into content creators means considering its opportunities and risks. 

Aside from its obvious profit-generating potential on the side of the creators, consumers gain from it as well. Thanks to the range of content they offer, there now exists a diversity of thought in the digital space. The internet now makes up a more inclusive community in which people interact with each other in order to make sense of what’s happening around us.

Social media also became more entertaining or, say, useful because there’s always something out there for everyone’s interests. If we want to learn about current affairs, travel tips, beauty trends, or even look into fad diets, there will always be a content creator available on our explore page. 

This development, however, also endangered the state of misinformation even outside the digital world. When faced with so much content, we must be critical on how to absorb them. Our personal and digital lives are so tied it will possibly converge more than we want to. Therefore, the things we do online may have consequences in real life. 

We should not treat the videos, images, or any posts out there in social media to be the sole sources of information available. Always verify the information you see online. Coinciding with that, try to be cautious about which content creators you should follow. Ponder on the influence they have on their followers.

Ultimately, we must be conscious consumers. Entertainment can only give us so much. It’s important that the things we see on social media also foster our thoughts, creativity, and personal development.

Blog by Maria Bernadette Torda