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Justin Bieber: Influencing Through Media


 4/29/19
Justin Bieber, a 25 year old singer and influencer is by far my favorite artist and always has been. He has been successful and hardworking in his career from the start when he was just 13 years old. I have been following his life through social media, news articles, radio stations, and anything his name was in for almost the past ten years. It seems crazy that I can know so much about a person I have never met, feel so close to him, and yet he could be a person nothing like the figure I have carved out for him to be. I have watched him through his peak, his ups and downs, and more recently I have noticed him becoming more and more open about his life through social media.
About three years ago Justin was on tour for his album, Purpose, and I had the chance to see him live in Los Angeles. About a week before his concert, he announced he was depressed because of the tour and the pressure he felt to make others happy. He decided to end his tour about a month early to focus on himself. As an artist with millions of fans, I’m sure this decision was very hard to make for him and it likely wasn’t easy knowing he was letting many people down. The next week when I saw him perform, it made me sad and I felt guilty of adding this unwanted pressure to his life. His concert was amazing and one of the best nights of my life, but knowing he was depressed and still had to carry on with his tour for weeks definitely changed my mindset. It reminded me that celebrities we see and look up to are under a lot of pressure to uphold these standards and have a much tougher life than we assume. Justin is a great example of a character that understands it’s okay to not be perfect and happy all the time, a trait that we all should be aware of and practice. He recognized when his career was getting in the way too much of his personal life, and I admire that about him.

Now, even three years later, Justin still suffers depression and admits to it. On a recent post on instagram he said, “I have been looking, seeking, trial and error as most of us do, I am now very focused on repairing some of the deep rooted that I have.” He said this as a reminder to his followers that his main focus is the health and happiness of himself and his family because he had been receiving a lot of requests for new music. In addition to issues he goes through, I admire that he posts new articles or other things from the media and gives his opinion on them. He recently talked about a fifteen year old boy who committed suicide because of the bullying he received when he came out as gay. His caption was, “This is horrible. I hate this with a passion… stop the hatred please!” I think it’s great that Justin is using his platform to discuss these issues because I’m sure there are many kids who get bullied for being gay, lesbian, etc. that saw this post and were happy to see his opinion and support. Also, Justin was recently in a popular song produced by Lil Dicky, “Earth” that brought attention to problems we are facing like climate change. He posted a part of the song on his instagram, which had a big impact on his followers and fans. Seeing that Justin cares for our earth, makes others want to make a change too. I appreciate Justin along with the other celebrities that use their popularity to bring attention to the major social and environmental issues we face through media. I think this activism is definitely a positive the media presents.

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