Student life isn’t only unfolding in classrooms, bars, and libraries—but is developing across curated digital feeds.
Whether it’s Get Ready With Me (GRWM) videos or comedy skits, Queen’s micro-influencers are becoming increasingly viral and visible in Kingston—with thousands, even millions of views, on TikTok, these micro-influencers are beginning to be recognized by peers around campus. The Journal met with various students who have amassed a social media following, including Alexa Paemurd, ArtSci ’26, Tyler Doughty, ArtSci ’29, and Caitlyn Shim, ConEd ’26, to discuss how their internet lives have positively shaped and impacted their student experiences.
For Doughty, or as he’s known online, the King @ Queen’s, posting about Queen’s and the university experience was something he began right as he stepped onto campus—and he isn’t planning on going anywhere soon. His content ranges from what’s trending to relatable videos for first years, but mostly focuses on comedic skits about the undergraduate student experience.
“[My content is] not for any serious debates or anything. If I can take 5 seconds out of your day and make you smile once, it’s all that matters to me,” Doughty said in an interview with The Journal, encouraging people to enjoy, to laugh, and to tease his content.
However, despite unserious content creation, Doughty’s serious about connecting with other first-years about the shared experiences of living in dormitories, navigating exams, and joking with Engineering students who’ve painted themselves purple. Doughty claims he gets recognized around campus by at least one person per day, and that number only increases at parties and social events.
Especially proud of the fact that he began content creating very early on into his undergraduate career, Doughty explains how it has allowed him to make a large reach amongst first-year students who are searching online for tips and relatability. “I take pride in the fact that I’m able to talk to the people who are coming into Queen’s and still have no clue what they’re doing, because if I’m going to be fully honest, I had no clue what I was doing as I was coming here,” he said.
Unlike Doughty, Shim, of Cait’s Cookies, was busy baking her future, not her feed—social media didn’t rise for her until last year. As of Jan. 8, she has over 80, 000 followers on TikTok, with her most liked video on TikTok reaching over 2.5 million views.
“I’ve never actually wanted to be [a social media influencer] and when I started the baking business, it wasn’t really my intention to try to go viral or be a big social media influencer,” Shim said in an interview with The Journal. “That was never what it was about, because even in my personal life, I tend to keep to myself.”
Shim first turned to social media to promote Cait’s Cookies, the baking business she launched in January 2025. After the success of her debut bake sale, she saw its potential—and the platform to grow it. With a natural love for editing, posting flavour reveals and baking tips came easily.
READ MORE: Cait’s Cookies bakes up sweet success in the student entrepreneur space
“I post every single day, which does mean filming, editing, and planning daily as well. Sometimes I forget that I even do cookies, because I don’t bake every single day, but I do post every single day, so it’s definitely a lot,” Shim said.
Social media success also came later in Alexa Paemurd’s university career. Her “Day in the Life” videos and study vlogs on TikTok have now reached more than 100, 000 followers. She began taking TikTok more seriously as a hobby in second year when her videos began gaining more traction, but it wasn’t until recently that Paemurd began to see social media’s career potential and started working with different companies for collaborations. She also signed with Upside Down Talent, a management house/talent agency in Toronto.
Through short TikTok videos, Paemurd shares advice for incoming students, study tips, and campus “study crawls,” hopping between favourite library and café spots. But her content also speaks to the later years of undergraduate life, reminding viewers that student-focused social media isn’t only for first-years.
“Right now, my content is about university and submitting Master’s applications and about living my last semester,” Paemurd said in an interview with The Journal. “My account is documenting my life, and hopefully these different life stages, other people will be in and will be looking for someone to relate to and hopefully, I can be that person.”
Paemurd says her content is often less about creating and more about documenting—her study vlogs simply capture what she’d be doing anyway. Additionally, she’s always loved documenting and creating content, explaining that she enjoyed “not even simply making TikToks, but travel recap videos for my friends or videos from being at home with my family.”
Similarly for fellow Queen’s student, Catherine Park, ConEd ’27, posting on social media has always been about documenting and curating as well.
“I take pride especially in my Instagram and use it to take photos of the little things that people might pass by in their everyday life and not truly see. I think it helps me to romanticize my life. My social media is a reflection, to show other people how I see the world,” Park said in an interview with The Journal, calling upon the popular adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. “I’ve always taken photos of anything and everything even as a kid.”
Park has also had some viral videos on TikTok, relating to academia.
“I find posting as a way to resonate and connect with people, showing the raw and vulnerable side of humanity. When I post on TikTok about the struggles I have in academia, I find it gains a lot of views and traction because other students can easily relate because most of us are on TikTok, likely facing similar struggles from abundant courseloads,” Park said.
Despite all of the positives of connecting and storytelling that come from student influencing and the online world, the balance between school and social media doesn’t come easily for some microinfluencers.
Shim spent the past summer, balancing two jobs, doing summer school, and baking on the side. “Running a student business and being a content creator isn’t easy at all,” she said. “Being a student, running a business, and creating content are each difficult in their own world, but doing all three at once is a lot more work than people realize. When I post about my content, I hope that I can portray to people that it does require a lot of time.”
Similarly for Paemurd, as her account has grown, she says she’s begun to feel a slight pressure to maintain a certain image on campus.
That tension reflects a broader shift in student life, where social media influence now feels both attainable and unavoidable. Today’s university students aren’t casual users of these platforms—they grew up on them. Pew Research reports that 95 per cent of American teenagers use TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube daily. The more time students spend online, the more content creation begins to feel within reach.
Doughty even jokes that some of his understanding of content creating has come from “doom-scrolling”—an endless scroll on social media for a long time without any breaks. Shim also mentions that even after her long days of juggling different responsibilities, she’d end the night on her phone, editing videos to post for the next day.
Though, because of her deep understanding of the online sphere, Shim told The Journal that content creation has become a “safe space”. However, these understandings of social media are not universally shared.
For Park, social media’s representative of the transience and fleetingness of human interest. When it comes to posting, she tells The Journal she doesn’t worry too much about what she posts because she doesn’t find it to be sustainable. “What social media makes popular at one certain point of time isn’t long-lasting, nor do I expect it to be,” Park said.
All that is known for certain about student social media use is the profound impact that it has on people’s lives, including fellow Queen’s students’ ideas and passions.
Despite the differences in Shim, Doughty, and Paemurd’s brand and approach to TikTok, they are all united in their love of Queen’s, their desire for authenticity both online and in real life, and none of them feel represented entirely by the term “student influencer”.
None of the three students expected to become influencers, micro campus celebrities, content creators, or whatever one wants to call it. All of them share the amazed feeling whenever greeted by people on campus who know them from their videos. Even though social media is often critiqued for making people less social in real life, reducing face-to-face interactions, this isn’t the experience they’ve had.
If anything, their social media presences have led more people who they didn’t know prior to approach and introduce themselves.
“I will never get tired of people being like ‘Oh my gosh, you’re the cookie girl’, or ‘you’re Cait’s Cookies’!” Shim said. She mentions having a bubbly personality and enjoying conversation with others, and being on social media has only provided an outlet for these interactions.
“I enjoy having conversations with strangers and this kind of brings a little bit more opportunity for those conversations. I like to get to know different people on campus and [being recognized] creates that opportunity,” Paemurd said in an interview with The Journal.
All three content creators began as relatively extroverted personalities who enjoy speaking and connecting with other peers. This confidence has contributed to their success online, due to their abilities to put themselves out there online, which requires a significant amount of bravery.
“Don’t let other people make you feel small or question yourself about anything that you’re posting. I’m such an overthinker that if I had let any of those thoughts get to me from the beginning, I wouldn’t be here, where I am with my social media and baking business in general,” Shim said.
Paemurd agrees with the overall sentiment, also encouraging students to “go for it” when it comes to posting. “Don’t care what other people think. Everything that makes you you is unique and people want to see that, regardless of if they think you’re the coolest person in the world or not, people still care about your life and you’d be shocked to see how many people do,” Paemurd said.
Despite their growing online worlds, all of Queen’s influencers have found a way to remain very connected with the flourishing Kingston community and have emphasized the support they’ve received from Queen’s community. For example, Cait’s Cookies ran a successful give-away collaboration with the Arts and Science Undergraduate Society (ASUS), Doughty has collaborated in the past with YGK Thrift Store, and TikTok influencer, Naveini Vasikaran, even collaborated with Lay Low Cafe to create a new matcha flavour.
Doughty believes Queen’s culture shows up in almost all of his videos. He received a considerable amount of views and positive attention after a TikTok condemning a transphobic and anti-semetic street interview video that was circulating after Queen’s FOCO weekend.
READ MORE: Antisemetic and transphobic FOCO street interview sees widespread attention
“I spoke on behalf of the Queen’s student community and a lot of people agreed and sided with me. I was able to band our community together fairly fast through [the TikTok]. I just really love the place I go to school,” Doughty said in an interview with The Journal.
With this, Doughty reminds Queen’s students that while student life continues to extend beyond lecture halls and libraries, social media has become yet another place where students find connection and community.
While social media is a prominent topic of discourse, especially for the negative effects that it may cause, it has also helped Queen’s students like Doughty, Paemurd, and Shim, to expand on their passions and get inspired.
Though social media can help to spread negativity and misinformation, some micro-influencers are showing how it can also be a tool for unity within the student experience to swap tips and show students that they’re not alone in what they are going through.
Tags
Cait's Cookies, Day in Life, micro-influencers, TikTok
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