Liam Payne’s tragic death illustrates once again the pressures of fame on young people [Video]

IF THE SPENDING power of teenagers first came to significance with the emerging success of Elvis Presley in the 1950s and the Beatles a decade later, by the time One Direction arrived on the scene in 2010, the commercialism of teen-oriented pop was in hypermode.

With the tragic death of Liam Payne this week, a man who had been famous for 14 of his 31 years, we are faced once again with the grim results of the pressures of fame on young people.

Thrown together in just 10 minutes, as Simon Cowell claims, Payne joined other solo auditionees Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, and Liam Tomlinson to become a ready-made famous boy band. Unlike boy bands that came before them, One Direction’s initial fame was as reality TV stars on The X Factor.

Unlike boy bands that came before them, their success was immediately boosted by Twitter as they …