Mugwort (and The Art of Influence)
By Stuart Grauer

There are enough influences on us in this crazy life. Finding the good ones is an art and a science. 

When I was a kid, influencing was big. If your parents didn’t think well enough of a kid you knew, they’d always say the same thing: “He’s a bad influence!” I don’t know if anyone ever said that about me, but I did not want to be of influence in particular!

Today, much of what influences our kids is far beyond parents’ view. What are the influences on our children and students? And on us? The answer:

Influencers, it seems. Being an influencer is a thing. A fairly recent thing. Many among us seek to defer to experts in any field, but a new skepticism of formally educated people may have led people to defer to online influencers. Rather than experts. Whoever they are.

Whoever are they? They eat up a lot of our kid’s time and consciousness. Are they a bad influence?

You can spot influencer-speak on all the social media. The “I” disappears and every sentence sounds like a pronouncement from the mountaintop. Things like these direct quotes:

• “Spent the last year listening deeply to what young people are telling us.”
• “Honored to be part of this important conversation.”
• “Grateful for the opportunity to connect with so many changemakers.”
• “Been sitting with one question: What if everything we know about learning is wrong?”

This pseudo-humble tone keeps creeping into my social media and inbox feeds. Are our students writing like this?

Want to learn about management? No need to bother with someone who has spent thirty years managing an organization. Your Instagram has alternatives.

Consider your modern leadership influencer. He began as a fitness coach and erstwhile nutritionist. Then came the podcast. (He’s got a great voice and a boatload of opinions.) Then a following. Before long, he’s weighing in on workplace performance, organizational culture, resilience, motivation, leadership, and probably the future of human flourishing. And selling you mugwort.

(Note to self: Can we get him for a graduation ceremony keynote?)

There is Anthony William. He has millions of followers and has written multiple bestselling wellness books. His cred:

• No medical degree.
• No recognized clinical training.
• Describes himself as receiving health information from a spiritual source.

Education Influencers

Plenty of teachers care about upward mobility. Well now, today, after teaching, you can advance to the role of: creator. Plenty of today’s rising education “creators” (influencer-speak) have audiences of hundreds of thousands or millions based on one to five years of classroom experience.

Examples include teachers who became known primarily through TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube rather than through sustained work in curriculum development, school leadership, or scholarly research.

Some provide excellent practical tips. The alert comes on when their systemic claims rest largely on their limited and statistically unreliable experience.

Here are indicators of people who are primarily influencers rather than experts in any field (other than the field of influencing):

• They rarely mention when evidence is mixed.
• Nearly every problem has a simple solution.
• Their own following becomes the main evidence that they have the expertise you need.
• Their content increasingly promotes things people are selling, like accelerated courses, coaching, supplements, or AI anything.
• They speak confidently about subjects far outside their actual experience.

 

A Good Influence

The people who influence me are people who have major achievements and strong, objective credentials in the areas where I seek wisdom or information.

I’ve been influenced by educators like Deborah Meier, Ted Sizer, Yong Zhao, and Dana Abplanalp-Diggs. Whether or not you agree with all of their conclusions, each built authority through decades of classroom practice, school leadership, research, or institutional innovation before becoming widely influential.

In education, just like in world affairs, government, health, and science, the line between “charismatic practitioner sharing opinions” and “expert on education” matters. A teacher with three outstanding years in one classroom may have interesting insights about those experiences, but that doesn't establish expertise in governance, curriculum design, leadership development, finance, adolescent development, etc.

Important to add: Even someone with decades of school leadership may still need to defer to specialists in areas like cognitive science or psychometrics. Which brings me to my favorite part of this column: I judge teachers by who their teachers (and experts) are. I judge leaders by their followers. Want to know how to seek out an expert? Experts are the ones seeking out experts.

What Our Kids Are Learning

The issue isn't only that influencers can be ridiculous. It's that our children and students are learning some whacky answers to the question “Who should I believe?”

Evidence suggests influencers and social-media personalities increasingly occupy “space” (it’s always “space” in influencer-land) once held by teachers, journalists, doctors, coaches, scholars, and other identifiable and credentialed authorities.

Pew's newest survey finds that roughly four in ten or more teen TikTok and Instagram users use those platforms for news.[1] I have friends who do this, and it saddens me, the influence charismatic, greedy demagogues have had on some of my friendships. I confess that this sadness is part of my motivation to write this column. Of course I am directing these thoughts toward teachers, students, and parents, but it’s everywhere.

For teens, it would be nice if this were all confined to sneakers and skin care. But 34% of them say they at least sometimes get their mental-health information from social media. Among those teens, 63% consider social media an important source of influence.[2] Sure, hanging around Jimmy Weber was a bad influence on me in 8^th grade, but that was a Peanuts cartoon compared to the inundation kids today experience online.

A 2025 Common Sense Media study found 60% of boys ages 11–17 describe influencers as “inspirational.” Like a muscular man with a ring light, a podcast, and 600,000 followers giving advice about testosterone supplements, diet, and the male body. Three-quarters of boys that age regularly encounter content concerning things like muscle-building, money, fighting, dating, and relationships. Much of it arrives without their searching for it. There it is on our screens.

A particularly simple example is food. In a randomized experiment published in Pediatrics, 176 children ages 9–11 were shown mock Instagram posts from popular influencers. Children who saw influencers promoting unhealthy snacks subsequently ate significantly more calories and more unhealthy food than children who saw the same influencers promoting nonfood products. That’s influence.[2]

Andrew Tate got famous as a kickboxer. He has no scholarly expertise but became an enormously influential online authority on masculinity and success: boys have carried his misogynistic teachings into classrooms, challenging female teachers and demeaning girls. We feel almost desperate in asking kids who follow that, “Where did you learn that about women?” because we see this happening in so many other areas, as well.

A 2024 review examined 51 studies of social media influencers and adolescent health. It found recurring problems involving unrealistic body images, unhealthy diets, substance-use promotion, and inaccurate diagnosis and treatment advice. The authors explicitly identify influencers' lack of expertise and commercial interests as problems.[3] But they make a lot of money.

I suppose it’s cool that authority and expertise have been democratized through incredible media access—but then anyone with a clever voice and high-speed internet can be an expert.

So it’s not cool.

Are schools teaching students to be evidence-based?

Some are. But I don't think we can say that American schooling has caught up with the problem. Are students learning the difference between evidence and charisma? Are they?

Since we have been instantly, involuntarily thrust into the Golden Age of AI, we actually have an opportunity to push back in the classroom so students click through to the references they see.

Every good teacher I know teaches students to cite sources. But do we teach them to ask why a source deserves to be cited? Or will any reference do? Do they know the difference between a researcher who has spent twenty years studying adolescent depression and a charismatic 24-year-old with 1.7 million followers talking about dopamine?

Evidence literacy is suddenly as much a basic skill as reading literacy. And this is where the experts take it back! Not by becoming louder influencers themselves, but by showing their work—making evidence interesting, accessible, and hard to fake. It’s on every teacher to help every student cite legitimate evidence—way more than we used to. Let’s teach students that real expertise is not a posture. It has sources. It embraces uncertainty, too. In short, it is taught in every classroom and with every assignment. At the Small Schools Coalition, we talk a lot about what human-scale education is for. How’s this: teaching kids not just how to find information, but what makes information worthy of influencing us.

In conclusion: There is a simple Golden Question for every parent, teacher, and friend, and it’s more crucial now than ever as we watch our kids and our own selves try to muddle through these confusing times. Here is that question:

“I’m not sure I’ve arrived at the same conclusion as you....
Where did you get your information?”

Then, after you ask this, unless you are some kind of influencer, really listen, even if it’s silence.

Thank you for reading!

PS, Request: 
 If you have just 2 minutes, PLEASE vote for Stuart to take his message to Austin. VOTING CLOSES IN 2 DAYS. Please click on the button below to vote for the Stuart’s proposal. 

VOTE FOR STUART'S PROPOSAL

You'll need to create an account. We promise, it takes a minute and is just a click. You'll need to verify your account through a link that will be sent to your email address. Then, paste into the search field:  "Schools at the Edge of the Map" or "Grauer" to find the proposal summary, and click on the ❤️ to submit your vote. Thank you!
 

---

[1] Teens’ Experiences on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, Pew Research Center

[2] Social Media Influencer Marketing and Children's Food Intake: A Randomized Trial, National Library of Medicine

[3] Social media influencers and adolescents’ health: A scoping review of the research field, ScienceDirect

---

COMMENT! Click on the "Comments" drop-down box below to share a comment.

SHARE! Click on the social media icons below or copy the link to share this column.