Pet Social Media Influencers.

Pet Social Media Influencers – The Impact On Animal Welfare.

The trend of using pets as social media influencers has grown massively in recent times and some accounts featuring animals have equally massive followings. While these accounts typically share cute and entertaining footage of pets, it’s important animal welfare is not being compromised just to get social media likes and engagement. Read our Holidays4Dogs article to find out more about pet social media influencers and how, sometimes, it’s not always in an animal’s best interests.

What is a social media influencer?

A social media influencer is someone who aims to build a large, on-line presence, in order to influence opinions. Frequently, this involves influencing people’s buying behaviours. Influencers often promote products and services and their ability to influence successfully, depends on how many people they can get to engage with their content. Social media influencers use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

What’s a ‘petfluencer’?

Often referred to as ‘petfluencers’  – these are social media influencers who use pets to promote products and services. Petfluencers are usually dogs and cats who appear in social media posts across a range of platforms.

Some of these animals have hundreds of thousands of followers and can have a huge impact on the pet industry. Many people are influenced by different trends and opinions when it comes to pet care and products. This sway people’s opinions and affect how they subsequently spend their money in the pet industry.

As well as promoting products, however, petfluencers are often used to raise awareness about animal issues. Subjects such as pet adoption, re-homing and other welfare issues are often highlighted by social media influencers and their pets. This is the more positive side of pet social media influencing.

Why are pet social media stars so popular?

There are lots of people who love animals – particularly dogs and cats. As a result, millions of us people respond to social media posts about animals – especially if those posts are cute, or funny. It’s long been established that using animals in marketing campaigns is very successful. Adverts involving animals tend to be memorable and so, then, are the products and services they promote.

It’s just a bit of fun – why are there welfare concerns surrounding pet social media influencers?

There has been a huge increase in the use of animals for social media marketing. With this, comes the concern that animal welfare is being compromised. There is even the worry that animals are deliberately put in harms way, in order to create engaging content.

World Animal Protection UK have voiced concerns about a disturbing rise in fake animal rescue videos being shared across social media platforms. In many cases, animals are deliberately put in danger, only to be ‘rescued’ by content creators. In some case, animals are even drugged to enhance the drama.

Cute, or cruel?

There are plenty of examples that most of us probably see regularly on social media – where animal exploitation is clear. Other trends which raise welfare concerns involve things like, barking in a dog’s face and then filming their reaction.  This can be very confusing and stressful for a dog and may even incite the dog to bite someone’s face. However, thousands of people copied this and put it on their own social media pages.

We have recently seen one post of a social media influencer throwing her dachshund into a pond (from a fair height) and then claiming the dog enjoys it –  when, from the footage, it clearly doesn’t.

However, even the numerous negative comments disagreeing with this sort of treatment towards an animal, are often seen as positive by influencers. At the end of the day, they are getting engagement on their posts – which is what they want. However, it is quite obviously at the expense of the animal.

Many dogs enjoy swimming, even little ones. But they don’t like being launched into a pond and not being given the choice to do so. Worse still, people post footage like this just to get social media likes.

Some animals are made to wear clothing and other encumbrances in order to make them look cute, or comical. There’s also a great deal of footage which depicts pets being forced to perform tricks, which are not part of their natural behaviour.

It’s not just domestic pets who are treated poorly. There are many worldwide posts involving wild animals kept as pets. Many appear to be housed in inappropriate circumstances. Tigers, lions, monkeys and racoons can be seen living in private homes without having the opportunity for a species appropriate life. This also puts people at risk too.

Ethical content is important.

Ethically created content can have a positive effect by highlighting an awareness of animal welfare issues. There is nothing wrong in featuring pets in social media content as long as the animals are allowed to engaging in natural behaviours.

It is very worrying that animals are being exploited on social media in these worrying ways. Dogs shouldn’t be being dressed up in silly outfits and paraded on Facebook as a means of making money.

Animals have now been recognised as sentient beings. This mean they can feel pain, suffering, anxiety and stress and shouldn’t be subjected to it. Animals should not be being shown in such a way that it causes harm to the animal itself.

Depicting animals in this way can also influence the way in which people then think about animals. Surely, this is just going backwards in terms of fostering positive attitudes to animal welfare, animal rights and species appropriate lives that all animals need and deserve?

Final thoughts.

Many experts, as outlined by the University of Portsmouth, believe there needs to be much tighter regulation and ethical compliance in the field of social media marketing. Many social media influencers are promoting themselves as ‘experts’ and can hold significant power of consumer behaviour and societal norms. While some influencers can positively inspire, many more aim to deceive, cause deliberate upset, conflict and misinformation.

There is definitely a grave need for policymakers and marketing professionals to insist that ethical considerations, transparency, welfare (animal and people) and consumer protection is addressed adequately.

Otherwise, influencers are likely to have an impact on huge swathes of society, that isn’t always necessarily be a good thing. Animal welfare is just one aspect. Poor social media content depicting exploitation, could have a dramatically negative affect on how animals are regarded and treated in the future.

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