It is indeed becoming increasingly common for youngsters to follow celebrities as their idols. While this new development can sometimes be beneficial, in my view, it is more likely to be detrimental overall.
Considering famous people like singers, athletes, and actors as role models can bring several benefits. Chief among them would be encouragement to the youth towards hard work, discipline, and patience because some celebrities would serve as living examples of what can be achieved if they keep going. As a result, juveniles will be motivated not to give up their dreams as their role models did not. Popular Korean singer IU would be a great example for this since she proves to her fans that dreams can come true with hard work even if a person does not have enough financial means. In this way, idolizing and looking up to well-known people can be highly beneficial.
Despite the benefit described above, I strongly believe that the potential problems of turning celebrities into role models are more significant in comparison. We cannot deny the fact that not all celebrities are just like how they appear on screen. Since youngsters seem to imitate not only celebrities’ onscreen behavior but also their lifestyle, people who might be addicted to drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes are more likely to have harmful effects on not-so-grown-ups. This is because unhealthy addictions celebrities have let young admirers accept as normal and eventually lead to experimenting with them. For example, a role model of the majority of the youth, P Diddy, started promoting the consumption of illegal drugs around juveniles, easily influenced individuals, resulting in normalization of such substances. In this way, celebrities should not be imitated by the youth.
In conclusion, although holding celebrities in high regard can be advantageous in some ways, I feel that the growing trend towards this should be viewed negatively on the whole.