How young is too young for superstardom? | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on November 27, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: The tragic death of 31-year-old One Direction star Liam Payne earlier this year, after falling from the balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires, has led some to question how young is too young for international stardom. Several have been charged in his death, including one person who was allegedly supplying him with drugs. Liam Payne was just 16 years old when One Direction was created. The world has watched as young stars, like Britney Spears and Justin Bieber, struggled to navigate the heights of celebrity. UCLA’s Dr. Adi Jaffe, a psychologist who specializes in addiction, joins The Excerpt to discuss whether it is reasonable to expect young people, even children, to be able to handle the psychological challenges associated with extreme fame.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, November 27th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.
The tragic death of 31-year-old One Direction star, Liam Payne, earlier this year after falling from the balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires has led some to question how young is too young for international stardom? Several have been charged in his death, including one person who was allegedly supplying drugs. Liam Payne was just 16 years old when One Direction was created. The world has watched as young stars like Britney Spears and Justin Bieber struggle to navigate the heights of celebrity. Is it reasonable to expect young people, even children, to be able to handle the psychological challenges associated with extreme fame? Here to discuss the effects of fame on the very young is UCLA's Dr. Adi Jaffe, a psychologist who specializes in addiction.
Thanks for being on The Excerpt, Dr. Jaffe.
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dana Taylor:
On the surface, becoming a huge star with all the trappings, fame, and money might sound appealing. How does early fame impact a young person's development of self-identity?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
You stated it perfectly. To many people who haven't experienced celebrity, celebrity looks like the ultimate side of success. Having worked with a slew of people who've made it, I can tell you that the reality is pretty isolating and can be really, really challenging for even an adult's psyche in terms of how to socialize, how to find their place in the world, post-hitting celebrity. And the younger you make it, oftentimes the less prepared you are.
You mentioned the sense of self-identity. Many young people find that identity, think junior high, think high school, through their social interactions and their abilities to test parts of their personality associate with people who've known them for years. What happens in celebrity, especially for some of these kids who make it as early as 12, 13, 14 through TV or music, is they end up being removed from that world. They don't have that check and balance. They don't have the social environment that so many kids take for granted. Instead, they're surrounded by their managers, by their caretakers, and oftentimes also by fans. Those relationships aren't real, or at least they're not real in the typical sense of development.
Dana Taylor:
How does the constant pressure from both the media and the public impact the mental health of young stars?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
Yeah. Again, even for adults, we know that this has been documented over and over, but children are different. Children need different caretaking, different protections.
My kids and I live in Los Angeles. My kids and other children in the city are often involved in the entertainment industry, but the entertainment industry has built in protections for children younger than 18, right? So they can't be on set for as long as an adult. They can't work the same hours. They need separate breaks, more frequent breaks, et cetera. And that is all to protect their psyche, to protect their stress.
We know from research that our bodies, our minds, they're meant to handle what's called acute stress, so short intervals of potentially high intensity stress, and we can handle that pretty well and protect ourselves emotionally and even cardiovascular in terms of our physical system.
Children can handle lower degrees of stress normally, but also they can flip into chronic stress more frequently, so they need longer rest periods. They may need to only work six to eight hours. So some of those protections are in the entertainment industry. They are not really present in the music industries. And without those protections, the stress accumulates over time, and then we see some really problematic behavior, which involves substance use and some other escaping behavior in order to try to manage all that stress.
Dana Taylor:
There was a time when young stars were primarily from the world of film, television, and music. Now, anyone can amass a huge following on social media, are the long-term psychological effects the same no matter the medium?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
It's probably hard to judge social media stardom and celebrity. It's a relatively new phenomenon. It hasn't been researched as well as some of the older mediums. But here's what I can say, right? We talked about pressure, we talked about stress. Being in the public eye creates its own type of stress for many who make it many celebrities. And what does that mean? That means you have to showcase kind of your best sides at all times. We all wake up on the wrong side of the bed sometimes. We all have a bad day. Well, if you're a celebrity, you're not really allowed to ever show that side of yourself, or we know what happens. We've all seen it in the tabloids. We offer the stories. And so there becomes this sort of self-protective mechanism.
Now, in the more traditional mediums, if you have a manager, if you have an agent, you may have some protective employees and protective staff around you that is helping shield you from some of those impacts. You may not have that if you made it in the social media world. But that goes both ways, right? The industries, both music and entertainment, are really geared towards making money. And so those agents, that staff, while taking care of you, also have a very specific mandate, and that is to make you more popular, to make more money, to keep driving the machine. There's a little more autonomy for those who make it through social media, and so there are pros and cons to both.
Dana Taylor:
Some of the biggest stars have online followings in the millions where young celebrities, their fan base may include many that are in their own age group, but it can also include some who are considerably older. What are your concerns there?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
Yeah, just thinking of the numbers that you mentioned, when I work with some celebrities or people who've made it either on social media and more traditional mediums like music and TV and film, it's hard sometimes to imagine when you have 50 million followers, right? You post a story and 3 million people look at it. Think of Wembley Stadium can't even hold that many people. The idea of 3 million people being engaged with every action you've had, that is a new age of exposure that we never really had 10, 15 years ago, right? Some celebrities back in the day, unless the paparazzi or news agency caught them on video, took pictures of them, they got to have some privacy.
Privacy is leaving the reality of many celebrities, right? The sphere of existence of exposure for them is omnipresent. They're always available 24/7/365. And so I think we're learning more and more about what that actually means for the long-term health and well-being of individuals.
I can tell you from personal anecdotal work with some of the individuals that I've worked with, that it is a real pressure on them on a daily basis. But celebrity life, especially when you start out young, is so isolating. It's hard to imagine having all the money, all the celebrity, millions of people looking at you, but you can't go to dinner at a restaurant because you can't put up with the pressure. A lot of these people are introverted. They're artists, right? They want to be kept to themselves, and they've lost that oftentimes for the rest of their lives.
Dana Taylor:
And are there any concerns about having a fan base that can be much older than the celebrity?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
Yeah. I mean, the nice thing about most celebrity exposure to the older crowd nowadays is it is remote anonymous. We have heard anecdotally of some stories where younger celebrities have older audience members who may acted appropriately. I think the removal, the anonymity can sometimes create this really interesting dynamic that, again, I hadn't seen even 10 years ago, which is kind of that internet trolling aspect of celebrity. So I worry a little bit less about the older age and more about that distance between the artist and the people who follow them and sometimes lead to really inappropriate interactions.
I know personally, I've worked with a number of celebrities that will scroll through some of these comments and have real stress and anxiety about people speaking to them in completely inappropriate ways, ways that none of us would ever think of talking to another person if we were actually in the room with them, but because this is all done remotely through a phone or a laptop, there's this bravado that sometimes takes on with these interactions. And these internet trolls can become incredibly inappropriate almost to the extent of what we used to think of in terms of stalking and those things, and that can enter into the celebrity sphere now because of the massive exposure that social media and other digital outlets provide.
Dana Taylor:
Dr. Jaffe, is it fair to say that all young people face the need for validation from someone, whether that be their parents, caregivers, and peers? Does the need for validation from the public register in a different way?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
First of all, I think yes, that's absolutely true. All children need to feel loved, appreciated, accepted. It starts with their immediate environment, as you mentioned, family and parents, extends into their social circle, their schoolmates, et cetera. That need is exacerbated now by social media for everybody, right? My kids who are not celebrities have that pressure, right? There are kids that maybe they had met before, kids they've never met before that are following them on social media, and they now have to navigate the idea of, "How do I look? How do I present to these people that I have some distance from?"
Again, as we mentioned, for celebrities, the volume of this is increased tenfold. I mean, you're talking about some celebrities have a hundred million followers. That's inconceivable. It's literally hard to imagine what a hundred million people paying attention to what you're doing on a daily basis does. Especially again, as I mentioned, you talk about validation. There's this reality of the online world where people can be incredibly nitpicky, mean, even cruel sometimes through digital media. And I've seen firsthand the impact of some individuals not being able to go to sleep because of the vitriol that they get through online sources.
Dana Taylor:
In your experience, is some of the stigma long-faced by those in need of mental health services beginning to fade? And if it is, is that helping those who are unable to live their lives privately?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
I think it's beginning to fade. I think Covid did a good bit to make many people who didn't think they would ever struggle emotionally or maybe hadn't realized that their emotional struggles were bothering them. I think Covid opened many people's eyes when we all had to isolate, when we all had to suffer with stress and anxiety at levels that maybe had not been present society-wide ever before, not in my lifetime anyway. I think many people had to confront the reality of mental health struggles. So some stigma disappeared.
Again, those who face fame and celebrity are looked at through a different filter. Are they allowed to suffer? To some extent, but they better be victorious over it, right? There better be a hero's journey to tell already, because if not, those trolls, those critics will peak quickly. And we see it. People will go through periods of depression, celebrities will go through periods of depression, maybe gain weight or lose weight, and all of a sudden the internet is awash with people commenting on it. So it's really hard to do mental health support for yourself when there are these outside forces that are constantly impacting it.
Dana Taylor:
What role does gaining financial independence at a very young age play in the ability of a young person to develop good decision-making skills?
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
In the film TV industry, there are actually guardrails in place. Some of your money has to be kept in these separate accounts. It cannot be open until you're 18 years old. Still substantially different for a young 14, 15-year-old to have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to a typical child.
Now in the music industry, it's a little bit of a free-for-all, right? It's like just whatever access you have to your money. One of the ways in which children learn how to manage money or learn how to even have responsibility around money is actually because of the paucity of access that they have to it, right? They have very little access, and it grows over time.
I've definitely been there to see some people who've made it at a younger age go crazy in terms of spending money, this sort of haphazardly spending. It's really, really interesting. I mean, that is one of the goals of celebrity you talked right at the outset here today, right? The accolades that go along are access to fans and attention, but then also success, right? The cars, the money, the houses.
And so I've seen the impact go all ways, to be perfectly honest. I've seen people who've been very responsible managing it and I've seen people who've been less frugal than they should have been. The risk is always, and this comes on the back end of the spending or the back end of celebrity, is what you have to do to keep maintaining that same level of success. So you could come to windfall at initial success, but then if you don't keep it up, the money runs out, and a lot of people don't realize that just because you made millions of dollars at one point in time does not mean you've set for life unless you're pretty responsible with it.
Dana Taylor:
Dr. Jaffe, thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt.
Dr. Adi Jaffe:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. And I hope that we do start making some changes and see the results of that in the industries themselves.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty.
Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.