If you scroll through TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube for five minutes, you’ll see internet personalities with massive followings shaping opinions, trends, and even worldviews in real time. For Gen Z, influencers aren’t just entertainers anymore. They’re trusted voices. As their reach expands, so does a more unsettling question: what happens when popularity starts to outweigh experience, expertise, and actual qualifications—especially in politics?
Unfortunately, we might already be witnessing that shift.
From Public Servants to Public Personalities
Most of today’s young voters grew up online. We don’t consume information through traditional gatekeepers like nightly news broadcasts or newspaper editorials. Instead, we learn through 30-second clips, livestreams, podcasts, and algorithm-curated feeds.
The people delivering that information often feel more relatable than traditional politicians. They speak casually, share personal stories, and appear accessible. They feel like peers, not authority figures. That relatability is powerful—sometimes more powerful than policy knowledge.
In many ways, modern campaigns resemble middle school student government elections: the most popular candidate often wins, not necessarily the one with the best ideas. Social media amplifies that dynamic on a national scale. A viral video can reach millions overnight, while a detailed policy proposal might never leave a campaign website.
We saw this play out dramatically in the New York City mayoral race, where social media presence became a decisive factor. For many observers, it felt less like a referendum on policy platforms and more like a digital popularity contest—one that Andrew Cuomo ultimately lost despite having nearly 50 years of political experience.
Zohran Mamdani, on the other hand, had relatively limited prior work experience before becoming mayor of the largest city in the country. However, his Instagram followers grew from under 20,000 before his run to nearly 4 million shortly after the 2025 primary.
He currently sits at 11.5 million Instagram followers, while Andrew Cuomo has around 218,000.
The numbers speak for themselves.
The Influencer Takeover Isn’t Just Political
This shift isn’t happening in a vacuum. Across entertainment industries, social media fame is reshaping who gets opportunities and who doesn’t.
Reality shows like Dancing with the Stars increasingly cast influencers alongside trained performers. Broadway productions have experimented with stunt casting social media personalities, sometimes frustrating theater professionals who spent years training for those stages and could arguably out-act TikTok stars any day. (No offense, Whitney Leavitt—or should I say, Roxie Hart.)
Influencers are also landing projects traditionally reserved for established entertainers. Social media personality Alix Earle and her family have secured their own Netflix reality show, while viral comedian Jake Shane has brought his podcast, Therapuss, to the platform as well. These deals signal a broader industry pivot: platforms are investing in built-in audiences rather than traditional résumés.
Influencers can be creative, hardworking, and genuine, but virality and visibility are not the same as talent and expertise. In the not-so-distant future, they will eventually beat out late-night shows in this new format, appealing to the younger generation.
Why invest in a host with decades of experience when a digital creator can deliver millions of built-in viewers instantly?
The Future of “Leadership”
The danger isn’t just that influencers are entering entertainment spaces; it’s that the same logic may apply to leadership.
Politics isn’t reality TV. The people elected to office make decisions that affect healthcare, education, economic stability, civil rights, and global security (otherwise known as the state of the world).
Recent campaigns like Kamala Harris’s have leaned heavily into celebrity endorsements, viral moments, and entertainment-based rallies. That strategy may boost engagement, but it also blurs the line between governing and performing, and it’s never something we would have seen in a presidential campaign 10 years ago.
When Donald Trump publicly endorsed influencer-boxer Jake Paul, it underscored how closely politics and internet celebrity culture have become intertwined. Influence itself has become political currency.
When Popularity Becomes a Qualification
The core issue isn’t that influencers are involved; it’s that visibility alone is starting to function as a qualification.
Algorithms reward engagement, not accuracy. Outrage spreads faster than nuance. A confident but incorrect statement can travel far wider than a carefully researched explanation. For a generation already navigating polarization and distrust in institutions, this environment makes it harder to distinguish between informed leadership and compelling performance.
There’s also the question of sustainability. Influencer fame is often volatile; platforms rise and fall, audiences shift, and controversies erupt overnight. Governance, however, requires long-term thinking, consistency, and the ability to work within complex systems. The skills that make someone successful online don’t always translate to effective policymaking.
A Double-Edged Sword for Gen Z
At the same time, social media has democratized communication in powerful ways. Grassroots movements can mobilize faster than ever. Young people who previously felt disconnected from politics now have direct channels to engage and organize. Influencers can raise awareness, amplify marginalized voices, and encourage civic participation. In that sense, they can strengthen democracy rather than weaken it.
The problem arises when entertainment value eclipses substance, when candidates are evaluated more like content creators than public servants.
As Gen Z gains political influence, we’ll shape what leadership looks like in the digital age. The question is whether we’ll reward candidates for being the most entertaining or the most capable and truly qualified.
Ideally, social media would serve as a bridge between leaders and citizens, not a substitute for leadership itself. Charisma and communication skills matter, but they should complement expertise, not replace it.
If the future of governance becomes indistinguishable from the attention economy, the consequences won’t be limited to trending topics or canceled shows. They’ll shape policies, institutions, and lives.
And unlike a viral video, those decisions can’t be scrolled past.