Why one of Instagram's top influencers hopes social media is dead by 2030
She’s one of Instagram’s best-known influencers in the UK – voted 99 on the Sunday Times Top 100 UK influencers this weekend – but body positivity campaigner Chessie King has revealed she hopes social media dies out within the decade.
Speaking on White Wine Question Time podcast, she said that in 10 years time, she wishes Instagram were no more.
“I genuinely hope that it comes back around that social media is actually gone and we all just meet each other in real life,” Chessie told the White Wine Question Time host Kate Thornton.
“As much as I love Instagram to connect communities, I think that it's just gone too far, and I honestly think we need to protect the next generation and the generation after that.
“I don't want my grandchildren to be on it. I want them to be meeting their future husbands or future wives without social media and without Tinder and without all the dating apps. And I want them to meet their best friends in real life.”
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Chessie, who has over 600,000 followers on Instagram, uses the platform to spread body positivity, touting herself as ‘your big sister/best friend’ in her bio. She believes that while she has used Instagram as positive force to help young girls, it’s time to take it offline.
“I think that the big sister role for me is now taking that online platform and going, ‘I want to change education and I want to start from a young age’,” she explained. “That's something I'm campaigning for – to have an hour a week to talk about the things that we weren't told at school.”
King received backlash earlier this year when she fronted a body positive campaign by retailer In The Style, with many people saying the brand should have chosen someone bigger than a size 12.
Talking about her body positive posts on White Wine Question Time, King said she was prompted to share her “first real photo” because all she saw was “a sea of perfection on Instagram.”
“Everyone was in a bikini on a beach and looked fantastic,” the Instagram star told Kate Thornton.
“It was when I realised that I had no one to look up to or no one to actually relate to and no one my size so I was like ‘I'm going to actually show my real bits and just wiggle them all around!’”
Hear Chessie King talk body positivity with Alexandra Crane and former Celebrity Big Brother contestant Ashley James on this week’s episode of White Wine Question time. Listen on iTunes or Spotify.
