Before you pass judgment, consider that some of DigiTour's stars may very well be smarter businesspeople than moguls like Jay Z. They are masters of what Valiando Rojas calls cross-platforming. "They don't only put content on one platform — in many ways, that would be a crime," she says. "They know the right amount of content to put up across five to six platforms daily."

Want to increase a fan's loyalty? Follow them. These "digital autographs" are the ultimate badge of honour, Valiando Rojas says, and many fans will mention the follow in their social media profiles along with the date that it happened.

This kind of stardom doesn't come without its drawbacks. DigiTour's performers decline to tell me exactly what has been said to them in direct messages on Twitter and Instagram, but suffice it to say that these are not all PG notes. Letting fans into every aspect of your life through photos and tweets means that some are bound to get more comfortable than is probably appropriate. They feel as if they're closer to you than they really are.

"I think it comes with the territory," Valiando Rojas says. "Even if you're not a social media star or working in a social media business, most people see the dark side of the internet and the trolls. It's everywhere. It's unavoidable. You learn to tune it out."

Is tuning it out a good thing when it comes to dealing with obsessive teenage fans? I'm not so sure. But we may have to reserve judgment on that until this generation of social media natives has grown up a bit.

Perhaps this is just a phase that girls have to go through, in much the same way that millennials obsessed over Bieber and Mickey Mouse Clubbers. But given that the currency of 2016 is already based, at least partially, on follows and Likes, you have to wonder what the future will look like when it's run by kids whose perspective on life is fully steeped in that culture.

After I ask Gray, the show's main heartthrob, how old he is (15), he asks me the same question. I tell him that I'm 25, about to turn 26. "You don't look a day over 20," he tells me. Maybe this is Gray's way of telling me I'm one of the "cool" kids. Then again, I only have 600 Instagram followers compared to his 2 million.