In the last six months, junior Ian Ta has made a name for himself in not just the Aragon community, but also the social media and content creation community as well. At over 5,000 followers on Instagram and almost 2,000 subscribers on YouTube, and his most popular reel reaching an audience of over 1.3 million, Ta’s social media journey has been off to an amazing start.
Even with these ever increasing numbers, Ta feels that there is more to social media than gaining popularity.
“I have a goal of inspiring as many people as I can to reach their full potential on their own health and wellness journey,” Ta said. “Regardless of how many followers, views or shares I get, I’m going to keep posting with the same passion because at the end of day, it doesn’t matter how many people view my videos.”
Even though his content consists of many different topics like “what I eat in a day,” training, shopping and motivation, the prevailing topic in Ta’s content is running. From a very young age, Ta has been interested in running. However, he never really took it seriously until meeting cross country coach Frank Hunt when coming to Aragon in his freshman year.
“I am extremely grateful that I had the chance to be mentored by such an amazing and accomplished coach,” Ta said.
Ta has been a part of Aragon’s cross country and track team for the three years he has attended Aragon and plans to run again in his senior year.
On a bad day, [running is] somewhat an escape because it can help to clear your head, reduce stress and help with anxiety
Like social media, Ta looks elsewhere for importance in running. Ta feels that running is more about its impact on people rather than being about competitiveness and speed.
“On a bad day, [running is] somewhat an escape because it can help to clear your head, reduce stress and help with anxiety,” Ta said. “On a good day, running can help you improve your physical and mental health and allow you to challenge yourself in a risk free setting.”
Ta found an interest in creating content around five years ago; however, he only started taking it seriously when he downloaded Instagram for the first time in May 2023. After gaining inspiration from content creators like Nico Felich, Jeremy Miller, Nick Bare and Matt Choi, five months after downloading Instagram, Ta officially started creating content.
Watching his progress over time really inspired me to take action to overcome this obstacle in my life
Ta found inspiration in these creators not just because they shared similar interests, but because Ta found that they could help him when he was struggling. For eight months in 2023, Ta found himself with an eating disorder. Similar to Ta, content creator Nico Felich was also struggling with an eating disorder.
“Watching his progress over time really inspired me to take action to overcome this obstacle in my life,” Ta said. “Having someone I could look up to in this time of uncertainty really helped a lot.”
Ta’s recovery further backs his idea that content creation and social media are much more than the statistics that they bring.
As expected, competitive running, social media and school is a lot to handle. Therefore, Ta has limited himself to posting four to eight videos each month. Even though it doesn’t seem like he’s posting many videos, each video can take from 30 minutes to upwards of three hours to edit.
“Since I’m a student, it does get a bit stressful sometimes but I always make sure to prioritize school over anything else,” Ta said.
After graduating, Ta looks forward to finding a career in the sports/physical therapy space, though he plans to continue his social media journey regardless of whether he continues to participate in competitive running or not.
To follow Ian Ta’s social media and running journey, you can find him on Instagram @ta_ian7 and YouTube @IanTa.
