Influencer grift is ruining the college experience

College used to be for learning, friendship and self-development. Now it’s all about likes, clicks and followers — and jealousy.

Recently, the University of Miami’s student newspaper ran a cover story headlined “Freshman Influencers Take Over TikTok” and featuring three incoming students with large followings.

It was enough to leave the rest of the school’s wannabe influencers on the brink of tears. 

“There’s enough room for all the influencers in the world, but at UMiami right now, it doesn’t feel that way,” Sienna, a freshman who was featured in an accompanying article but not on the cover, said in a TikTok video that also mentions wiping away her “tears.”

“It made me realize that, like, micro influencers don’t get enough recognition … ,” said Sienna, who has just over 24,000 followers on the platform. “I just don’t feel appreciated right now.”

But her FOMO is misdirected. She’s not missing out on this cover story — like so many college influencers right now, she’s missing out on real life.

And it’s not just UMiami, of course. By repackaging and repurposing rites of passage for social media consumption and the pursuit of brand deals, too many Gen-Z students are using college life to entertain an audience rather than experiencing it for themselves.

“You had to be there” is a phrase of the past.

Campuses are crawling with social media influencers who post “Get Ready With Me” videos from their dorm rooms. They take followers along to classes and film themselves studying in the library.

Sorority rush is a spectacle, where hopefuls post their “look of the day” into the digital abyss and share teary videos after the cool house on campus rejects them.

And campus gates have been flung open for public consumption, with videos of dancing sorority sisters delivered straight to creeps around the world.

Let’s not pretend it’s all done for fun. There’s also a competitive exhibitionism at play.

For eternally-on-social-media students, the college experience is less an opportunity to learn and make lifelong friends and more about raw material they can turn into content to gain followers and clout.

At the University of Arizona, an August TikTok — one single video — of Kappa Kappa Gammas dancing to “Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani raked in 41.4 million views. The sister featured up front was flown to New York Fashion Week with her mom as part of a brand deal.

The three freshmen featured on the cover of UMiami’s newspaper have 664,000, 323,000 and 72,000 followers on TikTok. But success isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

One of them, Colette Couillard, told The Miami Hurricane that she first went viral when she posted a video about being broken up with, back when she was still a high-school sophomore.

“I posted it on TikTok, and it went super viral,” she said. “At first I thought it was just funny, but then I realized people were actually following me and interested in my life.”

But, she admitted, “I’m on my phone all the time, doomscrolling” and “I post almost everything.”

This isn’t a dig at Couillard; to her credit, she also said, “If I have a big brand deal due the same week as exams, I just tell them to wait one second — school comes first.”

But as someone less than a decade older than these girls, I feel genuine concern. They’ve been taught that exposing everything is a virtue.

Kids are incentivized to post everything at all times, in case one of those videos turns out to be their viral breakthrough. The eye of the internet is there, all the time. No moment is sacred, no memory is personal.

When Gen Z looks back on their college days, it may just be a big blur of doomscrolling and content production.