In this modern day and age

In this modern day and age, with the advancement of technology and social media, there are bound to be some downfalls. Celebrity worship is a type of obsessive-addictive syndrome that can be caused by the overuse of social media. Stuart Fischoff, PhD, spokesman for the American Psychological Association and professor emeritus of media psychology at the California State University at Los Angeles quoted, “You have a confluence of forces coming together in technology and the media to make it happen and it’s worldwide and it’s multiplying like lice.” (Carr, N.L). Those who have celebrity worship syndrome usually idolize people who are well-known. For example, authors and journalists. However, researches and criminal prosecutions propose that they are most likely to be someone from the entertainment industry (Griffiths, 2013).
Moreover, the term CWS (Celebrity Worship Syndrome) was first used in a Daily Mail article entitled, “Do you worship the celebs?” written by a journalist by the name of James Chapman. It was said that Chapman was doing a report on a study published by Dr. John Maltby alongside his colleagues in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease entitled, “A Clinical Interpretation of Attitudes and Behaviors Associated with Celebrity Worship” (Griffiths, 2013).
In addition, hero worship is also a form of worship towards a specific individual. According to Cambridge Dictionary, the term hero worship is defined as a feeling of extreme admiration for someone, imagining that they have qualities or abilities that are better than anyone else’s. Similarly, pedestal syndrome occurs when an individual spends majority of their time, energy and efforts in trying to please their object of worship, or to impersonate him or her, in order to elevate the way they perceive you. An individual with pedestal syndrome usually overthinks about the meaning of all their words and actions and tend to overanalyze anything and everything that is being said by the “hero” (Macoveiciuc, 2014).
Some of the prominent differences between celebrity worship and hero worship is that heroes are usually revered for their bravery, nobility, honor and character. However, celebrities are often admired for their beauty, talent, riches and fame. Besides, celebrities’ desire praises whereas heroes deflect them (Sengupta, 2017). In addition, heroes are authentic, whereas celebrities represents derived values. Heroes are called heroes because they have achieved something great; a celebrity is merely well-known mainly because they have starred in award winning movies. Besides, a survey of 833 that was conducted on the telephone, found that idol worship predicted lower work performances, lower self-esteem and lower identity achievement in the results. Whereas, teenagers who worshiped people whom they have a relationship with such as family members, teachers, and other non-stars tended to have much higher levels of self-esteem and they also tend to score higher in the academic aspects of their lives (Cheung and Yue, 2003). In addition, it is also stated that celebrity worshipers had lower psychological well-being compared to the non-worshipers.
Lastly, those who have strong respect for those who can provide concrete benefits and inputs to the teenager’s lives seem to provide greater positive impacts compared to those who have celebrity worship syndrome as the results in the study shows that those with CWS have higher criminal records. An example was given in the study where the participants of the survey have stated that if their favourite celebrity were to ask them to do something illegal as a favour, they would most probably do it. The Criminality scale saw the uppermost connection with this factor (Maltby, Houran, and McCutcheon, 2003).