Should young celebrities worry about being a role model to their fans?

One of these occasions was in January 2014, when he went drag racing down a street with a friend, allegedly reaching 136 miles per hour. He reportedly did this without a driving licence. Many commentators claimed he didn’t appear to be too worried about being a role model to his fans, but at the time he experienced a dramatic fall in record sales. During the same year, he released six songs and none of them even managed to match the success of his previous material.

Before receiving the immense amount of bad publicity from the media which came with the arrest, he was flying high in the charts with all 10 of the songs he released in 2013 getting in to the top 60 in America. In 2015 he’s managed to avoid making negative headlines and has seen a colossal increase in the success of his songs. He’s released three tracks this year and they’ve all made the top 10 in the US and the UK. This shows that it would seem that, even if celebrities don’t care about being a role model to young fans, their public image has a vast effect on the success of their careers.

A personal role model of mine is Tiger Woods, as I’ve been playing and watching golf since I was three years old. I always aspired to be like him, as he was the most successful golfer of the time. However, when he was at the peak of his powers, he infamously did something which you wouldn’t expect from a man idolised by so many. In November 2009, he crashed his car into a tree after allegedly being chased out of his house by his wife, and it soon became apparent that he’d been having affairs with other women. He then suffered a very public fall from grace and his career seemed to stall. He had been the best in the world for a dozen years before the incident, but he never seemed to mentally recover and hasn’t won a major tournament since. At the time of writing he’s ranked number 400 in the world, and is supposedly considering retirement. He isn’t particularly old for a golfer, and one feels that if he hadn’t been unfaithful to his wife then he would still be the best in the world.

I know that what Tiger did ruined his career, and I am much less likely to do something similar. Fans of Justin Bieber will know of the devastating effect breaking the law can have on a life, and they will not want to do anything comparable to what he’s done. If a young celebrity acts as a positive role model, their fans will follow the example set by them. If they set a bad example, their fans will not follow it as they will see the impact of these actions.