The Piercing Industry’s Social Media Addiction Problem

There was a time when being a successful piercer mostly meant…being a good piercer. You built trust through your healed work, your bedside manner, your portfolio (physical media, held at the front counter, flipped through with reverence), and the quiet network of clients who recommended you to friends. You spent your energy learning anatomy, refining techniques, studying jewelry, and building relationships inside your local community. Spending a Friday night at the bar was the most important advertising you could do. Clients were met over drinks, at shows, or even at the local comic shop.

Now? Many piercers wake up and check Instagram before they brush their teeth.

And I don’t say that with judgment. I do the exact same thing, I’m not proud of it, and it’s why I’m writing this. Because it has become normalized in our industry to treat constant online visibility as a requirement for survival. The modern piercing industry is deeply entangled with social media. Not just as a marketing tool, but as an entire digital world that increasingly shapes our self-worth, our income, our schedules, our relationships with clients and peers, and even our perception of our own success. In many ways, the piercing industry has quietly become addicted to social media. Not “likes are fun” addicted. Not “doomscrolling on lunch break” addicted.

Structurally addicted.

Visibility online, likes, followers, shares, became social currency, and then it became real-world currency. Now, how much reach your post gets directly correlates with people coming into your studio to be pierced. Your success as a piercer can often be measured more in online followings than in the quality of your work.

Now, this might seem ironic coming from me, a piercer who has built a huge career off of social media. So hear me out- Social media did genuinely help the piercing industry in important ways.

It helped many piercers, myself included, build clientele and enough of a following to have successful careers. It allowed piercers to share safer practices. It gave clients access to educational resources. It connected isolated piercers to broader communities. It made marginalized artists more visible. It helped people discover the breadth of what is possible with body modification, and made many of us feel seen, feel beautiful, and learn the possibilities of what we could do with our bodies. Many of my generation wouldn’t have the work we do without BMEzine and IAM, the earliest generations of piercing ‘social media’, back when it was about actually being social. But somewhere along the line, visibility stopped being a tool and became the job itself. Now, how many followerrs and likes you have is nearly as important to your success as a piercer as how good the piercings you do are. And there is where I fear we've lost the plot.

When I started in this industry I was expect to pierce, answer phones, clean, and place jewelry orders. Normal. Now? Piercers are expected to do piercings, take photos of said piercings, edit photos and videos, mantain multiple accounts across multiple platforms, respond to DM's constantly, track our analytics, tag the right accoints, hashtag the right hashtags, stay current with whats trending, film educational content, have a personal brand, make sure their timelone looks aesthetic, share your personal life, but don't make it about yourself, stay politically visible but not "too political", and remain approchable, entertaining, educational, poilite, honest, and aspirational, all simultaneously. Oh, and still clean and place jewelry orders.

Some of those things listed might seem counterintuitive….and they are. I’ve been chastised for being too political and not political enough over the same post. Told to share my personal life so clients can connect, while also being told not to make it about me. Advice is conflicting, from within the industry and from folks who do social media marketing for a living. You are constantly walking a fine line of presenting things in the right way to maximum engagement. You become the product, no matter how hard you try to make it about your work.

And if engagement drops? Income these days drops with it. Now what we post has a dramatic effect on what we see come in our door. We have to keep posting, becuas ehtat keeps food on the table and a roof over our heads. We are required to be ‘on’ all the time, answering messages, scrolling, staying on top of trends, using the right audio or the right hashtag or the right reference while it’s still relevant. We have a balancing act of showing ourselves, but not too much, not too personal, but don’t be impersonal. And often we are more worried about how we are perceived online than who we are in person. In some ways, the internet becomes more real than real life, with real impact on our wages.

And of top of all of this. The Algorithm. When I started in this industry, you would make posts to advertise to clients and find clients, but your follower base was often a good mirror of your in-person clientele, made up of local folks who patronize your business. Things changed, as they always do. Now social media feels less like sharing my work and being excited to connect with clients, and more like playing a slot machine.

You post a fresh surface piercing. The numbers spike- the internet generally likes a surface piercing.

You post educational content. 3 likes and a share.

You post an exceptionally well done septum piercing with a classic circular barbell. This really shows your skill as a piercer. Crickets.

You post a dramatic ear project with trending audio. It explodes.

Your brain starts learning what the algorithm rewards.

Not necessarily what is ethical. Not necessarily what is educational. Not necessarily what reflects your best work. Just what performs. Often, that can be something questionable, it’s something dramatic, it’s arguing with another piercer online, it’s something that maybe looks really cool for the photo, but isn’t going to heal. It’s posting for the algorithm, no longer posting for your clients or yourself. A client comes in and picks out the coolest piece in the case, and your first thought is “Instagram is going to love this.” Not, ‘maybe this is too large for this placement’ not ‘can this client safely heal with this piece’. But what will the internet think? The likes it will get? I know this because I’ve caught myself in the same spiral.

The problem is that most piercers entered this industry to work with people in physical space, not to become full-time content creators. To do work we are proud of, not just work that performs well on the internet. But the algorithm doesn’t care about that. The algorithm rewards compulsion.

Recent court cases against Meta are formally challenging something many people already intuitively understand: these platforms are not neutral tools. They are intentionally designed to maximize engagement and compulsive use. In a landmark LA case, a jury found Meta and YouTube negligent for platform designs that allegedly contributed to addictive usage patterns in minors. The lawsuit focused specifically on features like infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications, and algorithmic recommendation systems. Additional lawsuits in Massachusetts and New Mexico similarly argue that Meta knowingly designed systems that encourage compulsive use and dependency. Piercers are not outside this ecosystem. We are immersed in it professionally. We almost have no choice but to be.

The same design systems alleged to foster addiction in teenagers are the systems many artists now rely on for rent money. I know, theres an irony in my saying this, a piercer who built a career and a studio on social meida. But I can say this with confidence becuase I've lived it. I'm addicted to social media, something that feels hard to say, and brings a lot of shame with it. But it's the truth.

In order to utilize trends, we have to be aware of them. I was my most successful as a TikTok creator when I scrolled for an hour or two (or three, or four) every night after work. I was the first to post about many trends, sometimes waking up early or going to bed late just to be the first one to post something clever to the latest cool audio. I often would finish a piercing and think, “This will do numbers on social media.” Ugh! I am not proud to admit this is how I’ve felt, because it does remove the human element from what we do. Unlike many industries, body modification is highly visual and emotionally charged, making it particularly vulnerable to 'engagement-driven' platforms. A piercing photo is not just a portfolio image anymore, showing how well you can pierce. It becomes social currency- validation, reach, visibility, follows, and, most of all, income. But in all of that, we loose some of the magic, the compassion and connection shared between piercer and client, the motivations behind being pierced, the trust, the light. It gets flattened into something consumable, the meaning lost to the scroll.

And whats more, a quite insidious element was intersections between the way the algorithms function, the client economy of instant gratification, and shop owners dedication to success. All of these factors combine to make piercers often uniquely susceptible to social media addiction. See, in many studios, piercers are also social media managers. We, of course, manage our own page, but a disproportionate number of piercers (compared to tattoo artists) manage their studios’ social media as well as their own. This means making posts on the studio page, answering messages, helping clients, and generally keeping things running. And as most of us know, being timely with these things can directly result in more clients, and thus more income. In my apprenticeship, if a DM went unanswered for more than 24 hours, I was in trouble, possibly punished. I found myself answering client messages at dinner, with friends, on dates. Even on a day off, I was still answering messages, days off never included Instagram. And of course, I never just answered a DM and closed my phone; I would end up scrolling for a bit. As we all do. Between running my studio’s socials and my own, I was clocking a daily screen time that I am ashamed to admit sometimes hit 6-8 hours a day. But this is the reality for many, many piercers. Their studios require them to be “always on” with the studio social media, and their bosses, or even their own clients can become argumentative if messages go unanswered for too long.

One of the most damaging shifts social media created in the piercing industry is the expectation of constant availability. Clients DM at midnight. People expect immediate troubleshooting through Instagram messages. Artists answer questions on their days off because failing to engage can hurt visibility. Some platforms penalize you if a message goes unanswered for more then 24 hours. Every unanswered message is a potentially lost client. Educational creators are pressured to constantly produce free labor because disappearing for even a week can tank reach. Social media demands quantity over quality, and that quanity incresingly has an impapct on our botom line. Now we have bosses and studuo owners pressuring us for the same, and clients who expect instant responses. The result? Piercers who spend years without a true day off- they check instagram every single day, answering messages and posting.

This mirrors concerns raised by many educators of varying backgrounds online, discussing how online visibility creates unsustainable expectations around emotional accessibility and constant communication. The line between “being a piercer” and “being online as a piercer” has blurred so completely that many professionals no longer experience true off-hours. My DM’s are 24/7, 365. And because social media rewards consistency, taking breaks can feel professionally dangerous. That is a hallmark of addiction systems- the feeling that disengaging comes with punishment.

And we perpetuate it! I have found myself getting frustrated when the receptionist at my doctor's office doesn’t answer me right away about an appointment. Feeling upset when a friend takes a day to respond. We simultaneously hold ourselves and others to impossible standards of communication, and then we enforce these standards both on ourselves and on others. I’ve been cursed out and given a bad review because I took longer than 24 hours to tell a client if a specific piece of jewelry was in stock for her appointment…..that was 2 months away. We are used to getting every Amazon package delivered in 24 hours, so when a small brand takes a few weeks to make and ship something, it’s agonizing. AI chatbots allow for an instant response to many queries- leading to piercers answering messages from thier bed at midnight to keep up with it. We are living in a time of instant gratification, and it’s killing us as piercers, and as people.

Talk to piercers privately, and the same themes emerge over and over again: burnout, imposter syndrome, comparison spirals, obsession with metrics, panic attacks over Instagram, anxiety around posting frequency, feeling invisible when engagement dips, pressure to commodify personal identity, and difficulty separating personal life from professional selves. Many piercers and tattoo artists now experience their careers through analytics dashboards, rather than powerful interactions with their clients. Who cares if you loved the piece or the client loved the piece- did the algorithm love it?

A beautiful, technically excellent piercing that gets poor engagement can feel like failure. Meanwhile, dramatic content optimized for virality can receive massive attention, regardless of technical quality. Some of my most technically challenging work has gotten the least amount of likes- because it was pierced with something simple, because the client wasn’t 'conventionally attractive', or because it happened to be posted the same day something else happened on the internet that stole everyone’s attention. And to be clear: social media visibility is not inherently bad. I would not have the career or success I currently have if it weren’t for social media. But the platforms themselves are not designed around education, sustainability, or community care. They are designed around retention. The recent lawsuits against Meta may become a turning point in how society views social media use. Courts are increasingly examining whether addictive platform design is ethical. As someone who spent a lot of time playing world of warcraft and reading about how much thought went into small things like effects and sounds to keep players literally addicted to playing…..I feel I can say with certainty it’s all intentional, and all very much working as designed.

For the piercing industry, this creates an uncomfortable but necessary question: What happens when an entire beautiful, passionate, creative industry becomes economically dependent on systems increasingly accused of being psychologically exploitative? Because many piercers already know the answer emotionally. We feel trapped by platforms we resent. We rely on systems that exhaust us. We continue posting through burnout because stepping away can mean losing bookings. That is not a healthy professional enviroment.

And it becomes even more dangerous in industries built around emotional intimacy and physical labor. Piercing already requires enormous social energy, care work, emotional capacity and presence. Adding constant digital performance on top of that creates a version of the job that many people were never prepared for, never signed up for, and never wanted.

So what do we do?

There probably is no fully going back. Social media is now woven into the piercing industry. Clients discover artists online. Education spreads online. Communities organize online.

But I do think we need to start treating platform dependence as an occupational health issue rather than simply “part of the job.” Studios can encourage healthier communication boundaries. Piercers can diversify where clients find them. Educational resources can exist outside algorithmic feeds- we can build websites, newsletters, blogs, and portfolios we actually own (like what you are reading right now! Hey!). Most importantly, I think the industry needs to stop glorifying exhaustion as ambition.

Being permanently online is not proof of dedication. Posting every day is not proof of skill. And disappearing for a while does not make someone irrelevant. I write this as someone still terrified to go more than a few days without posting. I write this as someone who is just beginning to admit that they are addicted to social media (something that carries an immense amount of shame. What do you mean I’m addicted to instagram? That makes me feel weak to say, but I also know admitting it and talking about my experiences with it, are ways to move past it and hopefully help others feel seen.)

The piercing industry has always been strongest when it centered human connection, trust, ritual, care, and embodiment. Those things happen most meaningfully in real life- not inside an app designed to keep us scrolling forever.

Sincerly yours, a piercer learning to log off.