Jordyn Naughtrip, rising social media influencer, junior
Photo by Caroline Sun
Jordyn Naughtrip, junior, holds up her Instagram account (@jordynnaughtrip). She hopes to use her Instagram platform to encourage others to be themselves.
November 17, 2019
“[I want to be an Instagram influencer because] I want to spread this message that you don’t have to try hard to be yourself,” Naughtrip said. “I think everyone has been in a position where it’s so much easier to just conform and be someone that you’re skeptical about, but you’re going to go so much further understanding your values and your morals and being okay with them. It’s a message that I’ve learned from a lot of trial and error, and I’m still working on my self-image even now, but it’s a message that I want to share with people, and social media lets me do that.”
For Naughtrip, it is this connecting aspect of social media that draws her towards influencing on her Instagram platform.
“Whether it’s Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat, social media has just made communication a lot easier,” Naughtrip said. “It helps spread the word about people and situations and generates awareness for important causes, and it’s made expressing yourself and being creative and getting your name out there easier, too. You can connect with other people and different brands and different places that you’ve never encountered before and may never encounter if you hadn’t learned about it online.”
For Naughtrip, these possibilities were what helped her explore the world around her in a way that would have been impossible otherwise; they helped introduce her to new people and new friends.
“It’s amazing how you can take the time to put yourself behind your platforms, and really reach out to different types of people from hours or minutes away, and get more of a perspective about all sorts of things,” Naughtrip said. “I don’t know just people from Lake Zurich or Barrington and Stevenson; I know people from different states that have had major influences on my life and who have introduced me to all these different perspectives and ideas.”
57% of teens say they have met a new friend online — Pew Research Center
Although usage of social media has allowed Naughtrip and many other people “little keys into other people’s life that help you get to know them better,” she acknowledges that there are downsides to the prevalent use of social media, such as its ability to alter self-image.
“A lot of people don’t have self-confidence and it takes years to learn, but if you look at people’s feeds and you only see the best parts of their lives, you’re like, oh, their life must be perfect, and that can destroy self-esteem,” Naughtrip said. “That and follower counts- they can both really hurt people. So although social media does create opportunities, it can be very disruptive, too.”
Even for Naughtrip, who has found a passion in influencing others via social media, the influences of platforms such as Instagram were not always positive. She admits that like many others, social media ruined her confidence, “but it also brought [my confidence back],” Naughtrip said. “It’s given me the opportunity to do what I want and be who I want.”
