Gen Z Marketing: Do Creators Impact Mental Health?

Social media is now a significant part of consumers’ day-to-day lives. This is especially true for younger consumers like those in Gen Z, who are a digital native generation that use social media as a space to connect with community, seek out entertainment, source educational content, conduct product research and purchasing, and more. 

And at the forefront of a lot of those actions? Creators. 

According to Traackr’s most recent IMPACT report, 61% of US consumers say they are more likely to purchase a product from a brand if a creator they know and trust posts about it. And, over half of consumers said they are more likely to try out a new social platform if a creator they know and trust posts there. 

Creators certainly have sway over how and where consumers spend their time on social media, but what are the potential downsides of this type of influence? Traackr teamed up with Beekman 1802 and kindness.org, in order to conduct first-of-its-kind research on the link between kindness, mental health, and Gen Z marketing performance. 

Gen Z Marketing: Do Creators Impact Mental Health?

For the purposes of this research, a survey and data analysis was conducted amongst a specific set of beauty creators. You can find the original announcement of this creator research here.

Key findings from the research found that social media and creator content do impact mental health:

• Only 37% of beauty creators felt that social content in the beauty industry overall, was positively impacting the mental health of young people. 
• 78% of beauty creators recognize that their own content influences the mental health of their followers. 

Even more interesting — research found that creators that have characteristics that are likely to positively impact mental health tend to have more success:

• Creators with a more agreeable personality were found to have a correlation to higher follower/subscriber count. Agreeableness is defined by compassion, respect, compromise, cooperation, and trust in others. 
• Additionally on Instagram, more honest/humble creators also have more followers. Honesty-Humility, as a personality trait, is defined by sincerity, fairness, modesty, honesty, and disinterest in wealth and status.

To learn more, you can find the original announcement of this creator research here.