Dr Rosie Macpherson

This article explores how girls aged 9-15 perceive and experience adult support in relation to influencer culture, drawing on qualitative research conducted in southeast England. Girls believed that adults often seek to mitigate digital risk through instrumentalised education or protective parenting, and articulated a desire for more emotionally attuned, developmentally responsive and dialogic support. They critiqued superficial or misattuned adult responses and highlighted the importance of trust, emotional safety and mutual understanding in navigating the relational complexities of influencer culture. The article bridges research on girls' digital self-presentation and adult-led digital safety interventions, arguing for an ecological, relational and socio-affective approach to supporting girls' wellbeing. Findings point to a need for pedagogies and parenting strategies that move beyond risk aversion and information delivery, toward practices of care, co-reflection and critical media literacy attuned to the affective and gendered dimensions of influencer culture.

This paper examines how girls aged 9-15 engage with online influencer culture, focusing on interplays between digital and non-digital normative ecologies. Drawing on school-based workshops, we explore tensions between authenticity, normative ideals and self-presentation in girls' interactions with influencers. Participants expressed agency in content consumption alongside pressures to conform, shaped by social interactions online and offline. We argue that influencer culture perpetuates dominant femininity norms through reciprocal dynamics between influencers and audiences. Girls navigated this terrain ambivalently, often endorsing authenticity and diversity while feeling constrained by normative expectations. We propose a post-digital literacy framework to conceptualise girls' critically engagements with influence as part of everyday life, highlighting implications for education and digital practice.