Author Spotlight
Lydia Underwood
In kindergarten, I drew pictures of myself feeding dolphins and putting out fires — my indecisive self couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a dolphin trainer or firefighter when I grew up. But today, I watch 8-year-olds renegade-ing in public or mimicking Jeffree Starr, trying to become their generation’s next famous social media influencer.
A survey conducted by LEGO in 2019 found that out of 3,000 kids ages 8-12, one-third of them said they wanted to be YouTubers when they grew up.
Social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube perpetuate expectations among today’s youth that simply aren’t realistic. The videos that pop up on kids’ feeds typically have millions of views, because their algorithm boosts promotion for high-view videos, but that doesn’t mean your videos will gain the same popularity. I hate to break it to the 13-year-olds aspiring to make millions from subscriptions and likes, but not everyone can be internet famous — and getting there is a lot harder than it seems.
I’ll admit, I’ve uploaded a video on YouTube in idyllic effort to be launched into mega-fame. But I quickly realized how hard it was, it was impossible to feel comfortable in front of the camera and the editing process was tedious and took my non-technological self two days.
Being an influencer — someone who has a hefty following on social media — is a job you never get time off from, one where you’re constantly critiqued on your looks and actions. Trends dictate your life — if a half-shaved head was suddenly considered “cool,” you’d better pull out your razor and a camera to keep those likes coming. For example, vlogger Eva Gutowski, aka mylifeaseva, went from posting high school advice to travel vlogs in the Maldives as she got older. But her videos now are barely cracking 500K views while her old videos from four years ago have 30 million or more.
Sure, you could get lucky and sign brand deals with clothing resale companies like Dote and get free to Fiji, but to sustain yourself through an internet profession, you have to make sure you’re constantly appeasing your followers. Kids look at TikTok stars like Charli D’amelio and think all she does is post a video and instantly make millions of dollars. They don’t realize the scrutiny she faces for merely wearing a Canadian tuxedo or cutting her hair — or how many people before her have tried to become TikTok famous and failed.
An analysis done by Mathias Bartl, a professor at Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, showed that 96.5% of those trying to become YouTubers won’t make enough money off advertising to operate above the U.S. poverty line. But through pursuing a more secure career, such as nursing, you could make an average of $50,000 a year after 4 years of undergraduate college instead of barely enough to pay your apartment rent by editing videos that won’t be seen.
Emma Chamberlain, a popular 18-year-old YouTuber with 8.65 million subscribers, is among the top 3.5%. She’s currently sponsored by Louis Vuitton, who flew her to Paris Fashion Week and was the February cover story for Cosmopolitan. But the clips of Emma trying fast food veggie burgers don’t show the 30 hours she spends editing each video she posts, according to the New York Times.
The 40-70 hour workweek of a “normal” job might sound daunting, but I doubt Jeffree Starr, a popular make-up artist on YouTube, is chilling on the couch all day curled up by his dogs while trying to run 10 companies and keep his followers updated. And with YouTube, your day-to-day plans are dictated by what your followers want to see. Everything has to be original and interesting — the pressure can make people go to extremes such as Jake Paul filming inside a suicide forest in Japan while making jokes.
If you do manage to build an audience and a following, you still probably won’t be making millions a month. Just because Shane Dawson is raking in $7.2 million a year doesn’t mean you will.
Out of the 31 million channels on YouTube in 2019, only around 16,000 had over one million subscribers, according to Tubics, a website that can analyze your YouTube channel.
Younger kids today are growing up believing they can be in the top 1% for making funny videos with the likes of Cody Ko and Miranda Sings. In reality, it takes hours of grueling editing and money to finance videos to be truly successful — but YouTube’s algorithm is making it seem achievable because the only videos on your homepage are created by people who have over a million subscribers.
Just getting to the point where you can make any money is super hard. When you reach over 100,000 subscribers, you finally get a YouTube partner manager to help grow your channel. According to Selfy, a website that helps you grow your business, you can’t make money off of a channel until you have 1,000 subscribers. But the amount of money you can make through advertising depends on the kind of ads you’re able to feature and your viewers. To earn the most money, you want to have a high viewer engagement — the more interaction you get, the more money you’ll make.
It’s not surprising that the younger generation is becoming a massive army of YouTuber-wannabes — influencer’s lives are so alluring. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be rich and famous spending your days hanging out with David Dobrik at UCLA frat parties instead of sitting in an office for eight hours every day?
Young kids need to become aware of the fact that social-media stardom isn’t as easy as influencers make it look. If they keep believing these unrealistic expectations, soon we’ll have a society full of people trying to make their morning oatmeal view-worthy instead of finding the cure for Alzheimer’s.
I don’t want to watch a ton of mini James Charles running around with cameras only to end up among the penniless majority, or famous and realizing that influencer life is harder than they thought. I want elementary schoolers to keep dreaming of being firefighters and dolphin trainers — not renegading to pay their bills.
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