Attention is valuable but hard to get, so business owners and people with a lot of influence are always looking for ways to reach more people and make more money. Social media has not only proven to be a way to connect with a large number of people, but also a way for millions of entrepreneurs to make money.
We’ve all seen some influencers put ads for Amazon FBA or Spotify stores on our feeds. You may have even seen one of these “gurus” trying to sell you a course on dropshipping. All of these powerful people seem to tell the same story. “Why would you go to college when I can show you how to make millions? Do you not want to make more money and retire sooner?” This may sound good and tempting, but can we take a step back to see how dangerous it really is?
What’s wrong with this message
As was already said, social media makes it possible to reach millions of people. Formally, Instagram is open to anyone who is at least 13 years old. A 13-year-old mind can look at all of these “rich and successful” people who say that college degrees aren’t worth anything and understand what they mean. Does this have an effect on young minds that are easy to change? We can guess that it might, and the facts show that it does.
The chart shows how the number of people using social media has grown over the past ten years. What can we learn from these charts? Well, since 2010, more than three times as many people have used social media. There is also a link between the number of people using social media and the number of people going to college. There is no proof that these events are linked, and I didn’t do a statistical analysis to figure out the statistical significance. But just looking at the numbers and putting them together with what I see every day on social media has given me a dangerous picture.
Social media influencers are telling our kids that school is useless. These same influencers show off their luxurious lifestyles with multi-million-dollar jewellery collections, exotic cars, and other enticing things to get the attention of people who are easy to influence. A lot of these people have the same goal: to sell something. In one way or another, these influencers want you to buy something from them. Whether it’s a course or something else, it’s just meant to help them make more money and MAYBE help the person who buys it. Don’t get me wrong, some of these mentors can teach you important things. But I’ve seen some of these same people say over and over again that “education is useless” and “there’s no point in going to college.” This is so wrong based on the numbers that it hurts me, so let’s break it down.
The facts
In a recent article in Forbes, it was found that 84% of the 400 richest people in the world have at least a bachelor’s degree. In fact, 24% of this same group, or almost one-fourth, have a bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League school like Harvard or Yale. In addition, The National Study of Millionaires by Ramsey Solutions showed that 88% of millionaires have at least a bachelor’s degree, and 52% of millionaires have a degree from a Ph.D. or doctoral programme.
In short, this shows that almost 9 out of 10 millionaires have a college degree, about 1 out of 2 millionaires have a doctorate, and social media influencers who say your degree is worthless are wrong and statistically lying to you.
Even more specifically, let’s say you don’t want to become a millionaire. This chart compares the annual income brackets of people with and without Bachelor’s degrees. It comes from a report by the Tax Foundation and is based on data from the Census that is available to the public. The chart simply shows that 78% of people with an annual income of $200,000 or more have at least a Bachelor’s degree, while only 9% of people who have reached that level of income without formal education have done so. What else can I say?
Social media influencers literally lie to our young people every single day. They are led to believe that formal education is not important and that it’s easier to get rich without one. The truth is that a person’s level of education is strongly linked to how much money they make. Not only that, but a higher level of education is much more desirable in general. Formal education shows us how to use our minds to come up with new ideas and solve problems. This is one reason why most successful millionaires have a lot of schooling. I think that some of the value of education is not so much in what you learn as it is in how you train your mind to work at a higher level.
Info source – Entrepreneur