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- Becoming a YouTuber or vlogger has become the most popular career goal for US children and teenagers, according to recent polls.
- They're following the footsteps of YouTubers like Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul, who built fanbases in their late teens and now have millions of followers.
- Mongeau and Paul translated their vulgar vlogging fame into equally indelicate mainstream entertainment with the MTV show "No Filter: Tana Turns 21," illustrating a new pipeline between glamorous influencer lifestyles and mainstream culture.
- But some YouTubers warn that a career on the platform isn't something everyone should strive for, pointing to exploitation, anxiety, depression, and burnout as side effects of today's viral fame culture.
- Three YouTubers who have had successful channels for more than five years talked to Insider about the prospect of children aspiring to be like them, and how YouTube has changed their career trajectories.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Kids these days are more likely to have their sights set on YouTube's trending page than a corner office.
When a travel company recently polled 1,000 children and teenagers between the ages of 6 and 17, over half of them said they wanted to be a YouTuber or vlogger when they grew up. Similarly, a recent poll of 3,000 kids found that America's youth would prefer YouTube stardom over being an astronaut, a teacher, or even a famous musician.
Who can blame them? As much as some millennials and Gen X-ers would decry YouTubing as "not a real job," for kids growing up surrounded by screens, screens, and more screens, the onslaught of digital content is quickly paving the way for a the next iteration of celebrity success. They see other children, teens, and even toddlers gaining huge followings on YouTube and Instagram, which turns into what looks like fame and fortune. They want in.
The next generation of YouTube stars is on its way, and it's inspired by today's viral fame
![Tana Mongeau Jake Paul MTV No Filter Tana Turns 21 still]()
"Growing up, a lot of kids were like 'I want to be a Disney star, I want to be an actress, I want to be Hannah Montana.' And now like, a YouTuber is that," Jessie Paege, a 20-year-old YouTuber with 1.5 million subscribers, told Insider.
Unlike the fictional adventures of Disney channel stars, kids see creators like Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul, who built their online fandoms as teenagers, live out exorbitant lifestyles by just being themselves. Or so it seems.
Paul and his older brother Logan, along with Mongeau, are more recognizable to adults for their scandals than their personalities (Yes, thatneighborhood tyrant. That suicide forest video. ThatTanaCon).
They certainly aren't ideal role models, but that's largely where their appeal to their young followers stems from. And it works — Logan reached 10 million YouTube subscribers with record-breaking speed, Jake followed close behind, and Mongeau "married" into the family with a healthy following of her own.
Kids have watched Mongeau and Paul turn their tabloid-fodder relationship into a YouTube-only MTV series, "No Filter: Tana Turns 21," which documents their wild partying, bad choices, and money moves.
Read more: A YouTuber with 13 million followers surprised his friend with a brand new $290,000 Lamborghini he was gifted by EA Sports
Their audience may doubt the veracity of their relationship, but they're enthralled enough to click "Subscribe," and impressed enough to aspire to the rapid-fire pipeline between social media followers and viral fame.
But some YouTubers, like Steph Frosch, 26, are wary of how Mongeau and Paul make a career on the platform look, compared to how it actually is.
"People have become so fake, and this ideal influencer world. You only see them with their luxury cars, with their makeup all done, and they all look beautiful and happy and wealthy and successful. But that's also an illusion," Frosch told Insider.
She noted that social media profiles on sites like Instagram and Facebook usually only portray positive aspects of people's lives, which psychologically impacts the ways viewers, especially young viewers with developing psyches, begin to think about internet fame and online validation.
"People are only seeing an act. They don't see the panic attacks people have, they don't see people losing relationships because they always have to be on their phone, they don't see that side of it [...] These young kids, they just want to see these people they aspire to be having these successful, lavish lives, and thinking they can have that too."
The platform YouTube provides its creators has evolved — and not necessarily for the better
![Steph Frosch, Hannah Hart, Jessie Paege]()
Frosch says the evolution on YouTube from "authentic" videos, like personality-driven "day in the life" content, to "trend-driven" videos, like "Gucci hauls," has pushed some creators away, including herself.
Frosch's YouTube channel 'ElloSteph' has 370,000 subscribers, and she still posts to it, but she left Los Angeles — where hugely successful YouTubers tend to live — and moved to New York City to get a Master's degree in Educational Theatre from New York University.
"People were telling me 'Why would you give up being a YouTube creator to go back to school?'" Frosch told Insider. "Because everyone thinks of being a YouTuber as this ideal career path, and it is a dream for so many people. But I realized you can be living quote 'a dream,' but that doesn't mean it's your dream. And it wasn't my dream."
That's what she told Christine Sydelko, a Viner-turned-YouTuber who sits at 1.3 million subscribers, after Sydelko tweeted about her own burnout in June.
"hot take: i find being an influencer extremely unfulfilling and it's the major cause of my anxiety and depression and i wish i finished my degree and had a normal life hehehehehahahaha I'm fine [sic],"Sydelko wrote, to which Frosch replied that she could "very much relate."
Sydelko announced on September 6 that she had "quit the internet stuff" because she "can't stand the people getting in fake drama for attention or acting like they're a creative when they just film themselves living."
![Margaret Cho and Steph Frosch attends the Logo New Now Next Honors From Aspen Gay Ski Week on January 23, 2016 in Aspen, Colorado.]()
Read more: Joey Graceffa, who has 9 million YouTube subscribers, says creators feel 'at risk of losing your job constantly because you don't really know the rules to the game'
Not only is there more competition on YouTube now than there was when Frosch started her channel in 2010, but she thinks the larger subscriber bases YouTubers have in 2019, along with more access to advertising and more social media profiles to command, are more draining than people realize.
"I've literally seen the success destroy people, and it's really sad to see how it affects creators out there," she said. "It's gotten to a point where my go-to advice, the reflex at the back of my head when someone asks me 'What's your advice on becoming a YouTuber,' it's always, don't."
Frosch couldn't think of any YouTubers she knows personally who aren't miserable at least some of the time. Paege, who she's close with, says YouTube allowed her to find her voice.
Paege, who makes videos about mental health and identity, doesn't have as massive a following as the Paul brothers. But she has maintained her success for a few years longer than they've been around, and she's used it to branch into more traditional entertainment mediums, like her role on the YouTube TV series "Guilty Party." It hasn't always been easy.
"Sometimes I'll see my friends and for a second I'm like, 'Aw, it looks so easy,' but no, it's not," Paege said. "Being on the other side, it's not. I think it's because of the finished product and how short it can be, but like, no one sees the time put into it, or the brain energy."
Is YouTube actually a viable career path for children and teenagers?
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When asked if they would encourage a kid to get into YouTube today, facing a very different platform than it was ten, or even just five years ago, Frosch is inclined to say 'no.' She recalled that when she first started her channel, one of the YouTubers she looked up to the most was Hannah Hart.
Paege and Frosch have both been on YouTube longer than Paul and Mongeau, but neither mastered the platform as early as Hart. She has had an 11-year career making YouTube videos and turning her internet fame into more mainstream fame, including a Food Network mini-series, a proposal-planning series on Ellen DeGeneres' digital network, and a holiday-themed sequel to her "My Drunk Kitchen" YouTube series-inspired cookbook.
Hart told Insider that, at this point, starting a career on YouTube is similar to any entertainment medium.
"At the end of the day, if you want to pursue a career in art-making, the good news is there's many hundreds of years of human history that will tell you what it's like to pursue a career in art-making, and it's just the same as it is today," she said. "Don't try and be me, try and be you."
Paege says a career on YouTube could really go either way, in part depending on whether the kid in question is out for fame alone.
"YouTube really did help me establish myself, and I don't know if I ever would have gotten over being shy enough to feel comfortable using my voice if I hadn't started on YouTube," she said. "I would never want to stop a kid from doing that, but at the same time, I could definitely see it having some corruption with the wrong person. I feel like it could really go either way, with youth you can be naive."
![YouTube personality Jessie Paege speaks at The Build Series Presents Jessie Paege Discussing Her Girls Night In Tour at AOL HQ on September 20, 2016 in New York City.]()
Read more: The world's biggest YouTube stars told us they're burning out because of the unrelenting pressure to post new videos
If they want an easy shot at money and notoriety, it probably won't work out. It may seem like every kid has a chance to make it big on YouTube, and that all you need in 2019 to become a celebrity is a smartphone. That may be true for Mongeau and the Paul brothers, but they're exceptions.
Research released in February 2018 by a German university says 96.5 percent of those trying to make a career off of YouTube won't earn enough money through advertising alone to cross the US poverty line. Even those who make it into the top 3 percent of the most-viewed channels are estimated to bring in $16,800 a year through AdSense.
Almost every successful YouTuber has multiple revenue streams besides AdSense that include everything from merchandising to touring to brand partnerships. But that suggests another troubling angle for would-be young stars: exploitation. Almost 90 percent of Americans think it's wrong to make money off kids on social media, but that hasn't stopped brands and advertising from turning huge profits from stars who are under 18.
"There are brands and businesses taking advantage of young kids, and I would never want to see that sort of thing happen," Paege said. "It could be a child with the quote 'selling power,' but the kid doesn't even realize that, so they sell them short, they don't know how to stand up for themselves, they don't even know their own worth."
She suggested that in comparison to becoming a child celebrity through a corporation like Disney, blowing up online gives a kid much more control over their career and content. Everything from parental rights to child labor laws affect mainstream entertainment, but YouTube is a relatively lawless territory for its young influencers. That might make adults think twice, but for teens and tweens seeking independence, it sounds great.
"There's monetary benefit over the young person's wellbeing, especially with a kid without business knowledge," Paege said. "Disney stars have their parents with them. Kids on YouTube have a lot more control, and I would hope that a brand wouldn't take advantage of that."
Outcry over child exploitation has repeatedly forced the platform's hand, especially in recent years. It has taken multiple forms, from custody loss over parents playing abusive "pranks" for family channels to the creepy "Elsagate" videos that feature violent, sexual skits and scenes in videos that use cartoon characters to slip onto the YouTube Kids app.
Most recently, YouTube banned comments on videos that featured children, due to outcry over child stars that appear to be harmed in the making of videos, along with what seemed to be widespread commenting by child predators on innocent videos that feature children. One child ASMR star, Makenna Kelly, who was featured in Teen Vogue, briefly quit the platform because her videos were being removed for "inappropriate" content she and her mother defended as harmless ASMR roleplays.
YouTube later worked with Kelly and her mother to restore her videos to the platform.
YouTubers are divided on what the platform's future will bring its next creators
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Even if they're not directly or indirectly being exploited, kids and teenagers looking to make money on YouTube will find it's not easy to consistently get views.
As YouTube's algorithm and platform have changed and evolved over the years, even some of its first major creators have expressed that it can be tricky to get your videos trending, even if you thought you mastered the platform. Like any industry, the metric of "success" on YouTube is constantly changing.
"I think that something everyone needs to remember is when in 2011, my video went quote 'viral,' it had a couple hundred thousand views. I don't know if that's the standard of virality today," Hart said.
She's still making YouTube videos regularly, but they don't rack up the same number of views that Mongeau and Paul net through their relationship antics. And that's OK, according to Hart, because she likes her corner of the internet as it is. But she can't say she would want to start a YouTube channel in today's environment, either.
"I think what appealed to me at the time was that we were really pioneers in this space," Hart told Insider. "I can't imagine the kind of pressure that these kids face now, where they can get scooped up into these big meet-and-greet tour things. I'm not entirely sure that that's beneficial to them as an artist, but it certainly can pay the bills, you know?"
![Social media personality Hannah Hart, US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and TV personality hairdresser Jonathan Van Ness talk during 2019 MTV Video Music Awards at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on August 26, 2019.]()
Read more: YouTuber Jaclyn Hill returns to Twitter while her beauty brand says its 'future is bright' following its disastrous lipstick launch
Both Hart and Frosch mentioned Elle Mills, a 21-year-old YouTuber who has been in the spotlight about as long as Mongeau has been. When Mills was 19, she told her audience she needed to take a break. She was burnt out, and that creativity drain has affected top creators across the internet.
More than ten top YouTube creators have taken breaks in the past year, including PewDiePie, who up until recently was the platform's most subscribed-to channel. For many YouTubers, the drive to stay on top of trends as an individual handling their entire production can become too much.
"If you want to run a content business then yes, it will be very demanding. But that's what you signed up for," Hart said. "There's a lot of people that make money off those other people and there's a lot of short-term gains to be had, and it's really about finding that balance. Asking a young adult to find that balance that quickly is a really tall ask."
With YouTube still in the picture, but in a stable enough position to focus on quality over quantity, Frosch has her degree and LGBTQ-focused video-making to look forward to, Hart has her career in entertainment, and Paege is hoping to branch out more into the mental health sphere.
For Mongeau and Paul, "Tana Turns 21" has wrapped up, and whether they'll continue to capitalize on their dramatized relationship status going forward is unclear.
Either way, if they want to keep people's attention, they'll have to devise more flashy stunts and calculated disasters, or risk fading into obscurity. No matter what, the kids will be watching — and waiting for their turn.
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