Why are young people glorifying celebrities?

[Natural510]

Geez, "young people" get the blame for everything. Gossiping about famous people is as old as time itself.

[Oramasfella]

It is not just young people; and celebrity gossip/celebrity worship is not a modern-day phenom. Google "Louella Parsons & Hedda Hopper."

[NoClueWho]

Ummmm...people of ALL ages have ALWAYS glorified celebrities. That's just a part of Western culture and a part of human nature...

[Milo Wolf]

Glorification is essentially built into the concept of celebrity. Tens of thousands of people packed into a major league ballpark and cheering wildly at someone's ability to hit a ball ... in the year 1921? That's glorifying celebrity. Buffalo Bill in his Wild West touring show. Actors on the stage in 18th-century London.

The difference today does not lie in a change of attitudes but in the development of technologies that allow far greater interaction between the famous and the masses. Long-distance travel. Recording mediums. Radio. Television. Social media. These things didn't create celebrity. What they did was allow the latent interest in it to be harnessed much more effectively.

[limpbrisket]

Haven't people of all ages always glorified celebrities? If young people have anything to do with it recently, it's probably because we're living in an age where you young people are getting rich doing young people things. I mean you can play video games all day and pull in six figures now so that speaks more to a younger generation. Then there's the whole appeal of celebrities being wealthy and, for the most part, attractive. People like that for some reason. I don't personally have any interest in social influencers or reality tv stars, but plenty of people do it seems.