Are the Kardashians Losing Popularity? What Americans Think

The Kardashians' influence on pop culture has fallen in the past year, according to an exclusive poll conducted for Newsweek.

The famous family rose to fame in the early 2000s. At the time, Kim Kardashian was working for pal Paris Hilton as a closet organizer. The SKKN by Kim founder, 42, also became a household name thanks to her sex tape with ex-boyfriend Ray J.

Meanwhile, Robert Kardashian—who was married to Kris Jenner from 1978-1991—gained recognition as one of O.J. Simpson's defense attorneys during Simpson's 1995 murder trial.

In Jenner's 2011 memoir Kris Jenner... and All Things Kardashian, the momager, 67, admitted her business decisions have always been highly "calculated."

"I started to look at our careers like pieces on a chessboard. Every day, I woke up and walked into my office and asked myself, 'What move do you need to make today?'" she wrote in the book. "It was very calculated. My business decisions and strategies were very intentional, definite and planned to the nth degree."

When Jenner first took her idea of a reality TV show to E! producer Ryan Seacrest, he wasn't totally convinced. That being said, the Live With Kelly and Ryan host, 47, was looking for a new show following the success of The Osbournes, which detailed the lives of Ozzy Osbourne, wife Sharon Osbourne and their two children, Jack and Kelly.

"I had seen The Osbournes and thought to myself—because I had formed a production company—I thought we should find something in this vein," he told Access in 2013. "And at the time, we had heard that Kris was interested in doing something with the family, so it was me and one other guy at the company. I had to buy a video camera for this shoot to go to a barbecue they were having on a Sunday. And I remember thinking to myself, 'Is this going to be worth spending X amount of [company] dollars?'"

Seacrest continued, "We went up and we shot a barbecue on a Sunday of the family. They were all together—as crazy and as fun as loving as they are—and they were throwing each other in the pool and I came back and saw the tape. And I thought, 'Oh my God, we've got to show this to E!' and we took it up to the folks at E! and pitched it to them and they said, 'Let's do it. Let's go for it.' We had no idea it would become the monster pop culture business that it is."

Keeping Up With the Kardashians premiered on October 14, 2007 and ended on June 20, 2021. Their Hulu series The Kardashians premiered in April 2022.

Despite the popularity of the shows, a December 5 survey of 1,500 adults in the United States, conducted by Redfield & Wilton for Newsweek, revealed 33 percent of Americans think the Kardashians' influence on pop culture has fallen in the past year.

That compared with 19 percent who felt the family's influence had increased while 22 percent felt it had stayed the same and the remainder didn't know.

Additionally, 47 percent said celebrity parents like Kim Kardashian should not post photos of their children on social media. Nineteen percent supported the right of celebrity parents to post pictures of their children while the rest didn't know.

Previously, psychotherapist MJ Corey, who runs the Kardashian Kolloquium site, told Newsweek that the Kardashians "changed pop culture forever."

"The Kardashians can teach us about synergy—I see synergy between the content they put out and the evolution of media itself. Kris Jenner herself has said that there was a 'perfect storm' of new applications at the helm of Kim's career—Instagram and Twitter—Kim became super fluent in those platforms just as they were booming. I consider Kim the original—or, at least, ultimate—influencer."

She added that Kim Kardashian, specifically, "really opened the door for this new form of fame," noting that over the years, the reality star's "relevance" has become "difficult to deny, especially because the family is multi-generational and because Kim is angling her way into unforeseen domains like law and finance."

"Kim's commitment to growth parallels the algorithms we're all addicted to," Corey concluded. "She's like watching a living video game—and we're seeing a new kind of star expand beyond what we ever expected."

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