Using Social Media to Uplift Others With Krystal Lake

Krystal is an online educator, Forbes under 30 influencer, and founder of Cut By Krystal, a social media production company. She uses her platforms to shine a light on marginalised groups and making culture and news easier to understand.

.        We hear about the bad side of social media all the time. The phone addiction, the shortening of our attention spans, the fake-happiness, etc. These are all valid points, but I find myself thinking about how much social media has changed my life...in a good way, even before the “social media fame.” It has changed the world, and your life as well. I thought why not use this force for good, I might have the power to make a change in my community. I might get someone to laugh, or THINK, or empathise with me and that person might live all the way in Nevada - that’s the power of social media. So... I went through with the plan: make content, touch hearts, speak my truth, post!

          My journey started in lockdown. I was craving community and the desire to talk about topics that might be too harsh to discuss with some of my friends and family, so I turned to social media. TikTok was the app that everyone was talking about, so I downloaded it and saw so many discussions and interesting topics on the app (once I got past all the awkward dancing and teenagers yelling out that they’re a “savage.”) I was scrolling so much on TikTok, one second I’m looking at lesbian thirst-traps and the next second I was learning about mental health hacks, the algorithm knew me so well. I was now a part of the viral queer community and the virtual POC community. 

At the time I was working as a social media manager, so I knew about the tricks of creating viral content and I thought to myself “maybe I should become an influencer.” I wanted to use my skills to uplift my community and bring education to the app full of dancing and comedy. I thought about what content I wish I had when I was growing up - queer representation (in a positive way,) inspiring Black people that I could relate to, and factual history about people of colour (not the twisted stories that I learned in school, I wanted the real deal). So the idea came, I was going to make all of that content. I came up with my slogan “stuff schools don’t teach” and created content that focused on mental health, history and uplifting communities. 

In return my videos started to go viral and most importantly the messages from kids, teens and parents signaled that I was accomplishing my goals. The messages would typically go like this: “Krystal, I hated my skin colour, then I watched your video on why we were taught to hate our dark skin and why our skin is beautiful. Now I love my skin” or “Damn you taught me more in this 1 minute video than my teacher taught me in a year.” This support led me to having over a half million followers, be chosen as a Forbes Under 30 lister, Top 10 Influencer by the British LGBT Awards, featured in Vogue as a top creator and allowed me to quit my “corporate dream job” to speak to people all over the world as an influencer about the topics that I care about. Not to toot my own horn, but that’s only just a small slice of the opportunities this brought me, so, honestly, in return, social media uplifted me.

The mission is to continue uplifting my community, from queer people, to women, to people of colour and allies. The more people know how powerful and beautiful they are, as well as the freedom that comes with actually loving yourself, the more life will seem like a blessing rather than Hell on earth. Then when we do experience the feeling of Hell on earth, we’ll learn how to manage it better and realise that there are people who want to support and get through this together, as a unit, as a beautiful community. So cheers to the beautiful, uplifting side of social media. The key is to take the gifts that are given to us digitally and make it a part of your reality.

Now let me leave you with my channel as a gift from me to you (@DJKrystalLake) on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube.

See you in the digital world!

Krystal Lake