Instagram enables a particular kind of attention-seeking and image-driven performance that contributes to what Alice Marwick (2015) refers to as ‘instafamous’. Marwick argues that in the attention economy, people construct online identities that are underpinned by ‘deregulated capitalism and entrepreneurship’ and model both social mobility and aspirational consumption (2015: 10). To what extent do you think the online identities of Instakids – the children who are famous online due to the promotional efforts of their parents and/or professional communicators and marketers – conform to Marwick’s notion that Instagram users model ‘a neoliberal subjectivity that applies market principles to how they think about themselves, interact with others, and display their identity’ (2015: 7)?

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Analyse the Instagram accounts of either Pixie Curtis (instagram.com/pixiecurtis), Breanna Youn (instagram. com/official breannayoun) or any Instakid with a significant following. If social media is a celebration of individualism and online identities apply market principles, as Marwick argues, then to what extent is the identity of the child constructed around promotion and conspicuous consumption? That is, how is ‘celebrity’ performed and constructed through the various posts? And how do followers engage with this celebrity?