JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

This study provides rare insight into the psychological experiences of 24 high-profile primary digital influencers, focusing explicitly on how they navigate virality, social comparison, and emotional well-being within full-time content creation. Using semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis, four core themes were explicitly identified: (1) the addictive properties of virality, characterised by compulsive pursuit of online validation and dependency on engagement metrics; (2) performance-driven social comparison, marked by fluctuating self-evaluations tied directly to digital success, increased vulnerability during downturns, and envy toward peers’ achievements; (3) the subjective impact of digital fame on psychological well-being, yielding both empowerment and personal growth, as well as anxiety, burnout, and identity strain; and (4) proactive mental health management strategies, encompassing physical and environmental boundaries alongside cognitive reframing and resilience-building techniques. These findings explicitly extend social comparison theory into the digital influencer context, offering nuanced insights into the psychological costs and adaptive coping strategies associated with prolonged online visibility.

Objective:

Understand the driving factors and subsequent consequences of digital content creation on mental health well-being as it related to online social comparison

Methods:

Qualitative semi-structure interviews with thematic analysis grounded theory

Results:

The primary influencer study examined 24 high-profile creators whose fame originated entirely online, revealing four core themes regarding their psychological experiences. First, the study highlighted the addictive properties of virality. Participants described initial viral success as an intoxicating "high," leading to a deep emotional dependency on engagement metrics. When numbers dipped, creators experienced withdrawal-like anxiety, panic, and a compulsive need to recapture the lost attention. Second, social comparison was performance-driven and highly volatile. Comparison was not a static trait but fluctuated with real-time metrics. During periods of high engagement, influencers experienced "tunnel vision," focusing solely on their own success and ignoring competitors. However, periods of stagnation triggered intense, reactive upward comparisons, often accompanied by severe self-doubt and envy toward rapidly growing peers. Third, the subjective impact on well-being was dual-sided. While digital visibility fostered empowerment, personal growth, and meaningful audience connection, it also exacted a heavy psychological toll. Creators suffered from burnout, identity strain, and the relentless anxiety of undergoing "a performance review every second of every day" by their audience. Finally, participants proactively employed mental health management strategies. To survive the attention economy, creators enacted physical boundaries, such as using separate work phones and avoiding highly critical platforms like Reddit and Twitter. They also utilized cognitive reframing, consciously separating their "creator role" from their core personal identity to insulate themselves from the volatility of online feedback.

Conclusions:

The central conclusion of the thesis is that online social comparison is not merely an incidental habit, but the primary psychological mechanism driving the relationship between social media use and diminished well-being. Crucially, the research concludes that this distress is generated by the interaction between individual psychological vulnerabilities (such as socially prescribed perfectionism) and the structural architecture of the platforms. A major theoretical contribution is the Nonlinear Comparison Trajectory (NCT). The thesis concludes that within the digital attention economy, social comparison is not a stable personality trait but a highly volatile state dictated by "algorithmic opacity" and real-time metrics. Creators cycle through phases of "tunnel vision" during viral success and intense, reactive upward comparison during unexplained algorithmic downturns. Furthermore, the research concludes that offline prestige offers no real protection against the "validation economy". Hybrid influencers with established traditional fame were found to be just as susceptible to the anxieties of metric-driven evaluation as primary influencers, proving that the platform’s architecture functions as a universal leveller. Ultimately, the thesis concludes that the psychological toll of social media is a systemic issue rather than an individual failure of self-regulation. Because platforms actively engineer environments that weaponize the human drive for comparison, solutions must shift from focusing solely on user discipline to demanding structural transparency and questioning how human value is quantified online.