{"id":343167,"date":"2025-12-11T23:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T23:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/343167\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T23:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T23:08:11","slug":"it-is-stressful-being-an-influencer-says-somerset-gardener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/343167\/","title":{"rendered":"It is stressful being an influencer, says Somerset gardener"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RamonaRamona Jones<\/p>\n

Ramona Jones shares videos from her bountiful cottage garden in Somerset<\/p>\n

The stress of being a social media influencer can put significant pressure on mental health, a study has revealed.<\/p>\n

Influencers struggle with work-life balance and commercial pressures, as well as negative comments and the strain of appearing to be authentic, said researchers from the University of the West of England (UWE).<\/p>\n

Content creator Ramona Jones, 32, from Somerset, said she had to create strict work-life boundaries to stop certain comments from affecting her. <\/p>\n

She said: “Now that I’ve got these boundaries in place, its better, but I don’t think anyone can develop a thick enough skin to cope with some of the nasty comments that you do always get in this kind of work.”<\/p>\n

Ms Jones runs an account named “monalogue” on Instagram which was set up in 2013 and now has more than one million followers.<\/p>\n

It features artfully shot videos of Ms Jones’ lush cottage garden with her runner ducks, as well as travel tips and videos featuring the picturesque Somerset countryside. <\/p>\n

She said: “In the early days, it was quite tricky where my identity and work personas were intertwined. <\/p>\n

“So if I had difficult comments on social media, it was hard to tease them apart from your self-worth.<\/p>\n

“I would love for people to stop seeing content creators as a scapegoat for their stresses and their fears, and start seeing us as creative people who are wearing a lot of different hats and working hard.”<\/p>\n

‘Exploitative behaviour’<\/p>\n

Ms Jones said financial pressures can cause a lot of stress \u2013 for example, when big brands wait months to pay creators. <\/p>\n

She added that new creators who become viral quickly would benefit from a guidebook on contracts as they are vulnerable to the exploitative behaviour of big brands.<\/p>\n

“There is a massive proportion of [creators] who have autism or ADHD,” she said. “And I think the reason they’ve gone into this work is because they don’t necessarily fit into the standard working model, and in this place, they’ve found somewhere safe.<\/p>\n

“Their skill set’s really good for this kind of work, but it also means that group of people are really, really vulnerable.”<\/p>\n

\"RamonaRamona Jones<\/p>\n

Ramona says more should be done to guide new influencers through the industry<\/p>\n

A team of academics now plans to carry out a wider survey of influencers, following the study of ten content creators.<\/p>\n

Dr Moya Lerigo-Sampson, who led the research at UWE, said: “We’re really hoping to create recommendations for people who work in those roles, either as individuals, but also for marketing agencies, and brands themselves.”<\/p>\n

She said the findings could inform policy too. <\/p>\n

“People in these roles, they don’t have a line manager, they don’t have peers or colleagues to support them, or a HR department,” she said. “They are all navigating that kind of stuff themselves. <\/p>\n

“We want to make recommendations that would try to improve the day-to-day working environment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ramona Jones Ramona Jones shares videos from her bountiful cottage garden in Somerset The stress of being a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-343167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}