When you ask the age-old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, 75% of children aged 6 to 17 will choose being a YouTuber as their most desired career. Within the last decade, social media has skyrocketed in popularity, transforming regular people into celebrities seemingly overnight. It is not surprising that YouTube is taking this trend to the extreme.
YouTube, a video sharing platform created in 2005, allows anybody with a computer to upload videos containing any content to the site. This ranges from cute animal videos to tarot readings, and even includes “vlogs”, video blogs that people create and share to document their everyday lives.
Vlogs are exceedingly popular amongst the younger demographic.
I think of it as a revolution of the role of the typical movie actor: the YouTuber has become the main character of his or her own TV show, with their family and friends as the supporting characters and their day-to-day lives as the plot.
The glaring difference between these YouTubers and tradicional celebrities is that we don’t really know whether these YouTubers are acting or not — they may or may not be putting on a facade, but we don’t know either way, which can be scary. They use their private lives as a source of content, but the extent to whether this is genuine is always questionable. Nevertheless, it is as demanding as any Hollywood career: vloggers invest time and effort in exchange for the chance to be catapulted into superstardom.
For today’s youth, the life of a YouTuber holds immense appeal because of its accessibility. Most vloggers’ origins are humble: when starting out, a YouTuber is just someone filming their life without much intention of going viral or becoming famous. When compared to the highly polished celebrity culture, it is easy to see how much more realistic a YouTuber starting out can seem.
What many don’t realize is that their favorite online creators reap the same monetary profits as our Hollywood stars. YouTube has become an extremely lucrative business, with the top YouTube creators making between 15 and 20 million dollars a year — without even considering the additional revenue they collect from merchandise and paid appearances.
Unfortunately, the life that made these creators seem so likeable to their audience fades away as they become millionaires and lose their grasp on what made them popular in the first place. There are some online creators who reach this high level of success and are not seen as out of touch with reality. Some have been on YouTube for over 10 years and have over 20 million subscribers. Others aren’t so fortunate — far too many other creators are ripped apart for “changing” with the fame that comes along with their careers.
However, it seems that knowledge of the common fate of such YouTubers has yet to stop children from desiring the YouTuber lifestyle and career. In fact, studies report that anywhere between 1 in 5 children want to either by a YouTuber or some other variation of an online creator.
But the life of a YouTuber carries its burdens …
For one, there is no option to “step back” from work. This is impossible as their job is directly interconnected with their everyday life, creating a muddled sense of self. When creators try to speak about these hardships, they are met only with a harsh reminder that however hard their jobs may seem, they are receiving higher salaries than most surgeons for simply showcasing their everyday lives.
This field of work did not exist a decade ago, which is what makes it so innovative, yet elusive and confusing.
Let’s face it, a typical adult does not even know what a “YouTuber” means, let alone know that these creators can make millions of dollars off the platform.
The rise and popularity of YouTube and its online creators is only at its beginning stage, and its going to be an incredible and exciting journey to watch the way this new job settles into the market, and how the creators will find a balance between their own lives and those of their ever-changing audience.
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