Who's Really Watching Teenage Influencers?

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Behind The Screens: Who’s Watching Teenage Influencers?

A glimpse into the vast and unpredictable audience teenage influencers in India attract online: While their fame grows across YouTube and Instagram, an important question lingers—who is really watching them, and what does that mean for their safety? 

Decode’s Divya Chandra spoke to teenage influencers from across India, their managers and their parents to understand their audience demographics. Turns out, the largest audience of teenage content creators are not teenagers like themselves, they are adults.

Expert’s take: Arnika Singh, co-founder and director of programs, Social and Media Matters said, “Their engagement with people is something that needs to be monitored or there needs to be somebody who is having this discussion. Now, who will have this discussion? How can you have it at scale? They are all based in schools. How much are the platforms really having this conversation? You can’t go to every household, I understand but you can have such conversations in schools. Teachers, professors don’t know the basic safety settings of platforms like Instagram and I don’t blame them because the capacity has never been built.”

EXPLAINED

Why The 2026 Delimitation Has The Southern States Concerned

The delimitation exercise in India, which involves redrawing electoral boundaries and adjusting the number of parliamentary and state assembly seats based on population data, has become a contentious issue, particularly between the northern and southern states. 

The protest: Southern states are protesting against potential seat losses due to population shifts which they fear will lead to loss of political influence. Political leaders in these states argue that the process may unfairly benefit northern states at the expense of those that have successfully managed population control programs.

How does the population growth impact delimitation? What are the southern states proposing to do? Ritika Jain explains.

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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

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