What is an “influencer?”

According to Merriam-Webster it’s “a person who is able to generate interest in something (such as a consumer product) by posting about it on social media.”

To me, that means making a living from yelling, “Look at me!” They are famous for being famous. They then monetize that manufactured fame.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Influencers can be entertaining and share useful information. The problem becomes when so many young people think “influencer” is a viable career path. According to a survey conducted by IZEA Worldwide, 67 percent of social media consumers said they’d like to be a paid social media influencer, but 30 percent said they already considered themselves to be an influencer.

To be an influencer means constantly seeking content, and constantly checking for hits, likes, and retweets. They are emblematic of the behaviors at the root of the increase in serious mental health issues born of social media overuse.

Imagine peering at yourself in a mirror countless times a day. You’d become fixated on every little imperfection and absorbed with what you’d think of as your attractive features. And when you’re not looking in the mirror you’re looking to see if others are looking at you and comparing yourself to them.

Social media is a mirror with a scoreboard.

There’s a term for this: narcissism. And it isn’t healthy.

According to Dr. Louis Tay at Purdue University a study of about 1,700 U.S. young adults found that the amount of time and frequency of social media use both related to greater levels of depression. On the other hand restricting the amount of time spent on social media improved happiness.

Cognitively, there isn’t a difference between dwelling on yourself on social media and unhappiness.

I don’t think we should be surprised that the increasing mental health issues young people struggle with correlate to the increasing popularity of social media. Let’s remember, Facebook was founded in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and Tik Tok just six years ago, in 2017. They became embedded in popular culture as Gen Z (born after 1995) were growing up. And that’s why it’s hard for previous generations to understand the gravity of the matter.

Am I a caveman? Absolutely. I still marvel that I can make a call without finding a payphone and having 10 cents in my pocket. For me the generational divide is knowing what “calling collect” means.

It’s hard for me to appreciate the immense pressures that young people feel to keep up with the unrealistic ideals presented as the norm on social media. But the pressures are very real and I believe they are a leading cause of the mental health issues that students at our campuses wrestle with every time they look at their cell phones.

What’s the remedy? Prescribing “don’t look at your phone so much” is easy to say but hard to do without appearing to wear a bear skin and drag a club.

Spending time not thinking about oneself is the key. It’s no accident that those who are charitable – thinking about the well-being of others – are happier. Studies have found that people who give money to charity tend to be happier. While it may seem contradictory, the more we think about others, the happier we are. Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. faced great struggles but strike me as having been happy and at peace with themselves.

Students at SCICU member institutions have a leg up on happiness in that they have the opportunity to learn the ideas and values that inspired these great people, and others like them.

They are the most important influencers of all.

What’s that you say? Why would I want to shave a yak? It’s a term I came across and is defined as: “The activity you do that appears important when you are consciously or unconsciously procrastinating about a larger problem.”

How often do you find that the things you resolved at the beginning of the day to be a top priority remain unaccomplished by day’s end? How did that happen? Yak shaving.

Technology, the great boon to my productivity is also my greatest enemy. Before computers my distractions were limited to what was on my desk. Now I have a limitless number of websites to captivate me.

The opposite of yak shaving would seem to be “focus.” For example, when I try to work and listen to a podcast, I find what I’m doing is… listening to a podcast. I don’t think humans can truly focus on more than one thing at a time. But with phones, computers, laptops and tablets all demanding my attention, all shout “Look here! Look here! You might need to know this!”

I’m reminded of the exercise of fitting larger rocks and smaller pebbles into a jar. The rocks are one’s priorities and the pebbles are duties of lesser importance. If one puts the pebbles in first, the rocks won’t fit, but if the rocks go in first the pebbles will fill in the spaces. I spend the day resisting the temptation of all the pebbles pouring out of my devices.

Email is the greatest accessory of the yak shaver. Rather than committing to something I need to get done, I’ll say to myself, “I’ll just give my emails a quick check.” Then three hours go by. Of course, it’s easy to justify when you’re staring at 150 unopened emails.

But yak shaving isn’t without its benefits – turns out there’s another definition: Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem. That’s what makes yak shaving all the more devious – I can convince myself I’m on course when I’m way down a sidetrack.

By the way I came across the term yak shaving while I was… yak shaving.

Serves me right. And firms my resolve to stick with my resolution.

Hmm, I wonder where the concept of “New Year’s Resolutions” comes from? I’ll just look it up…

Maybe you’ve heard the old saying: “Give a person a fish and they’ll eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they’ll eat for a lifetime.” I don’t think it’s right.

Every now and then I like to fish in the pond across the street from my house. I rarely catch anything – it’s more an opportunity for quiet reflection. During one of these outings, it occurred to me that one can be taught the technical aspects of fishing: how to bait the hook, how to cast, the operation of the reel, etc., but will you really eat for a lifetime?

Sure, you may be successful with those particular skills, but what if the conditions change? What if your equipment breaks? What if the fish are gone? Being taught to fish isn’t necessarily enough.

Being equipped to learn about fish behavior, the impact of the weather, as well as water pH, and having the capacity to observe and analyze these conditions will lead to more, well, fish. And if there are no more fish, the ability to learn, observe and analyze will be useful as you pursue other means of securing your daily bread.

That’s why fishing is a metaphor for a college education.

Acquiring particular skills will certainly get students a specific job, but I fear that’s all they’ll get. Because of the breakneck pace of technology, jobs that are rewarding now may not exist in a few years. As troubling as that may be, a more bleak prospect is being stuck in a dead-end job, with no opportunity to advance or the skills to do so – fishing may be fun the first couple of years, but after 10 years the luster can wear off.

A liberal arts degree is proof of the graduate’s ability to conduct research, analyze findings, communicate effectively in a variety of media and collaborate with others. They can adapt to new circumstances and thrive in changing environments.

Of course, part of earning a liberal arts degree is developing an expertise in a particular body of knowledge that suits their chosen careers, but it is done in the context of a broad understanding of the world and the people in it.

So, if you’re looking for someone to fish with, pick a liberal arts graduate. The conversation will be a lot more interesting. And you’ll catch more fish.

The SCICU Board of Trustees had a great meeting Oct. 13, during which I led a discussion on how students entering college today are very different from those of a generation ago.

Students were facing serious challenges before the pandemic but the last couple of years only magnified those issues. These are the students known as “Generation Z,” born between 1996-2015 — the pandemic transformed them into “Generation COVID.”

In their short lives they have known nothing but impermanence. They were young children during the Great Recession, and overheard their families talk of lost jobs and fractured family budgets – now they’re learning the definitions of “recession” and “stagflation.” They’ve witnessed terrorism and mass shootings. The only politics they’ve known is deeply, angrily partisan with wild shifts in majorities and leadership. Add to those the instability of COVID – of not knowing even if they would attend school in person.

Not surprisingly, even before the pandemic more and more students were wrestling with mental health issues. Take a look at the numbers from Sarah Lipson, an assistant professor at Boston University who is the principal investigator for The Healthy Minds Study, which has collected about 600,000 student responses at 600 campuses across the country.

Increasing rates of depressive symptoms:
2013 (22%) – 2021 (41%)

Increasing rates of anxiety symptoms:
2013 (17%) – 2021 (34%)

Increasing rates of suicidal ideation:
2007 (6%) – 2021 (14.1%)

Now add the stress resulting from the isolation and academic disruption so many students faced as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns. It’s no wonder that, according to the 2022 College Confidence Index, 40 percent of students considered dropping out last year.

Here in South Carolina students are fortunate to have the option of attending the 21 member SCICU colleges and universities who each offer a comforting sense of community while providing their own unique living and learning environments that put students first.

Being liberal arts campuses, they all offer academic programs that afford students the chance to put their lives, and struggles, in perspective – to understand the world through eyes of our greatest philosophers, artists and scientists. Not surprisingly, surveys show that people who have studied the liberal arts are happier.

Generation COVID has a lot going against it. And while in some quarters a liberal arts degree has been called into question, the well-being of a generation depends on it.

With the September 2022 edition of the SCICU Newsletter we kick off a new feature: The SCICU Legislative Spotlight.

Every month we’ll learn more about a member of the General Assembly who attended a SCICU member institution or has a close relationship with one.

We are honored our first Spotlight is S.C. House Speaker Murrell Smith, who, as you’ll read, is a proud graduate of Wofford College.

Speaker Smith’s experience at Wofford set him on a path to professional success and public leadership. He will share with you in his own words how Wofford professors inspired his love history and interest in politics. He may not have realized it at the time but his work in the classroom and extracurricular activities were preparing him to run for S.C. House of Representatives and manage the challenges of elected office.

You might say that Speaker Smith’s path from his hometown of Sumter to the Statehouse passed through Wofford.

What I found fascinating was that, while a History major, it was an art history professor that encouraged his political engagement.

But don’t take my word for it, read the Legislative Spotlight and let Speaker Smith tell you himself.

It’s that time of year! Campuses are welcoming students for the fall semester, like they have for many years…well, except for those COVID years. And colleges and universities continue to take the precautions appropriate to their communities and campus culture.

As COVID-19 begins to loosen its grip on us, there’s still plenty for campus leaders to wrestle with. Even before the pandemic higher education was undergoing significant disruptions. SCICU member institutions are still sorting through the changes they face. What are some of those challenges?

Students are changing. As for traditional students – the 18-year-old high graduates – their final years of high school were spent alone, online. They are often less prepared academically, and after two years of isolation and the cancellation of so many extracurricular activities, they are struggling with their social and emotional intelligence. Mental health issues were already a growing concern, but, with the stress of being at college, campuses are facing unprecedented demand for counselling.

And there are fewer traditional students. There has been much talk in higher education circles about the “demographic collapse” to occur in 2025 when the number of high school graduates begins to decline precipitously. At the same time, more and more adults are looking for advance preparation of one sort or another. They believe they are not looking for the classic campus experience so much as specific knowledge to advance in their careers.

Technology is changing. Remember when “Zoom” meant going really fast? In one form or another virtual meetings and online learning are here to stay. That’s just the beginning. Some campuses in the country are dabbling with virtual campuses – put on goggles, hit the link and you’re walking across a virtual quad, entering a virtual classroom, to attend a lecture by the avatar of a professor. As dystopian as that may sound to many of us, it’s a meta world that some young people are just as, if not more, comfortable in.

The economy is changing. After many years of sustained growth, we are in a period of inflation, that may be a recession, with traces of stagflation. Since the pandemic, millions of employees disappeared and no one seems able to find them. What will the economy look like a year from now? What should colleges students expect of the job market when they graduate? The only honest answer is, who knows?

The world is changing. I hate to admit it, but there are times I long for the predictability of the Cold War. You knew where the lines were drawn, and that those lines would be there tomorrow and the next day. We now must reckon with a world of unstable alignments. Much like about 100 years ago, we wake up every day with the awareness that a conflict on one small part of the map could lead to world war, as it did in 1914.

All this change is captured in one word: uncertainty. How do we educate and prepare students to stand on shifting sands? The answer is a familiar one – by imbuing them with the mental agility and creative thinking, as well as the timeless truths and principles, afforded by a liberal arts education. Along with preparing their students to adapt and thrive in change, SCICU member colleges and universities equip their students with a grounding in the human experience that empowers them to cope with the stress of uncertainty.

I am so very proud to serve private colleges and universities that are so deeply committed to the success of their students. That never changes.

If I were to give a commencement address this year, it would be, well, short. That’s because short speeches are best, and most fondly, recalled. It would go something like this:

We’ve all seen a lot of headlines reporting inflation is at its highest in 40 years. That rang a bell.

I know what it’s like to leave the security and predictability of college life and venture into an economically uncertain world. I graduated this month precisely 40 years ago.

I remember envying friends just a few years older whose lives seemed so much more sorted. Now everything was changing – heck, Ma Bell was being broken up! That’s what we called the phone company – the only phone company. Suddenly, just making a call required choosing among things called “providers,” and “services.”

Because I attended a private liberal arts university, however, I knew I had options. I felt prepared to take on any challenge I put my mind to, and confident I’d succeed. For me that meant running an asphalt driveway sealing business with a friend of mine. We branded ourselves, took out ads and designed and distributed flyers (no Internet back then). We had never done those things, but we figured them out. The work was smelly and hot, but we worked for ourselves, and after a few months I had made enough money to travel cross-country. Being an American History graduate, I felt I should see the object of my studies.

That trip was followed by other career twists and turns including a gig as a restaurant host, followed by graduate school, legislative work and college stints that happily led to my current position at SCICU.

Why the trip down memory lane? The members of the Class of 1982 bear many of the same anxieties faced by, you, the Class of 2022, but we also share the prospect of unlimited possibilities. In 2019 Dell Technologies forecast that 85 percent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet!

Like my post-graduate experience, your career path will no doubt include curves and lane changes, even more than I faced. Making the most of those opportunities requires having the skills to adapt to new circumstances, to learn fast and to figure out how to succeed. In other words, having attended a private liberal arts college, you are eminently qualified for whatever you choose to take on.

Now, this is the part of the commencement address when I’m supposed to impart wisdom that, like a beacon, will direct you to success and fame. Sorry, I just have the flashlight on my cell phone, but I’ll give it a shot.

Don’t stress about your future, just pick a path. If it turns out to be the wrong one, you’ll have vital information you didn’t have before – you’ll now know what you don’t want to do, which will make it a lot easier to pick the better path for you.

And base your success on where you are, not where you’ve been.

I’m not sealing driveways, but I turned out OK.