Teenagers of today’s generation dream of it at some point: Being stopped and asked for pictures, having swarms of comments on every one of your social media posts, and watching your follower count go up every day. The perceived feeling of belonging that comes with everyone knowing who you are, knowing people love you, and what you put out in the world. But for senior Ray Kenley, fame isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Although Kenley loves social media, he says it can be difficult to balance his audience, and his personal life. Kenley gained his followers through posting videos he found to be relatable to his primarily teenage audience. In the beginning, Kenley’s TikTok, his main social media platform, was a fashion account. Shortly after a video deviating from his regular content went viral, his life transformed.
“In the cafeteria I’ll be walking around, and I notice people looking at me, like pointing me out, which I don’t really like.” Kenley said. “It’s kind of irritating.”
Although Kenley feels like every one of his 395,000 followers watch his every move on TikTok, his popularity also makes it difficult to live his life as a normal teenager.
According to Kenley, social media can often feel like everyone’s life is perfect. But as he gained a larger TikTok audience, Kenley says he realized that that’s not the case.
“I’ve had trouble in my personal life, but I’ll still post everything and act completely fine,” Kenley said.
Kenley feels that people know every detail about him, what he posts is truly just a small snippet of his life. His followers don’t see when he’s dealing with personal issues, but even then, Kenley keeps posting to retain his follower’s interest.
“[Tiktok has] taught me that people actually have personal lives outside of stuff, outside of their social media,” Kenley said.
Kenley’s father, Bill Kenley, an English teacher at NHS, has similar views about his son’s popularity, and the concept of teens going viral in general.
“I think it’s potentially troublesome, in the sense that you get a lot of eyes [on you],” Bill said.
But to his father, trying to stop the forward motion of social media is futile. As new media personalities are introduced, and well-established ones gain more followers, social media influencers are becoming more and more entrenched in our society.
“I’m aware that the world moves quickly, and if we tried to stop everything we didn’t agree with, we would just be fighting all the time,” Bill said.
Despite his anxiety about children becoming social media personalities, Bill is proud that his son is putting out relatable, funny, positive content.
“[Ray] has done a nice job, being relatively positive with what he puts out,” Bill said.
One of Kenley’s followers, junior Stella Roudebush, feels that the goal of social media is to have a good time, scrolling through Instagram or tiktok, and relax after what may have been a tough day.
“Ray’s content is something you don’t have to think too hard about, it’s just fun to scroll through and wind down with.” Said Roudebush.
Despite all the hardships that come with being so well known on social media, Ray maintains a passion for it.
“I love making people laugh…with like stupid stuff, I love creating content.” Kenley said.
