Years ago, when a seven-year-old was asked to draw "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The answers used to be distributed between the doctor, the officer and the astronaut, while today, in classrooms in both Norway and Wisconsin, an increasing number of children are holding their pens to draw the YouTube logo.
That's the conclusion of a new academic study conducted by Matthew Simon, a professor of career and technical education at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in collaboration with his research team, in a rare field comparison between two countries that differ in culture and education system, according to the academic platform "The Conversation."
Using a direct field methodology, the researchers asked the children a simple question: "When I grow up, I want to be", and then followed up with a more important question: "How did you learn about this profession?"
The study involved more than 80 children aged 7 to 11 in Wisconsin, as well as discussion sessions with more than 140 middle and high school students, and similar interviews were conducted with more than 60 children in Norway in the same age group.
The result revealed that more than 60% of middle and high school students surveyed between 2021 and 2024 said they wanted to become social media influencers, or that their choice of future career was directly influenced by what they saw online. Other professions, such as professional footballer, actor or musician-related professions, came in the next ranks.
Younger children, some of them simply drew a TikTok logo or typed the word "influencer" without having a clear idea of who or what they would influence.
In a survey conducted by Wakefield Research and sponsored by Citizens Financial Group in collaboration with Junior Achievement, nearly 1,000 teens aged 13 to 18 found that 40 percent of them are seriously considering working as social media content creators.
The Gap Between Dream and Financial Reality
Herein lies the paradox that many children overlook. "Online fame rarely means getting rich. According to the 2024 State of Content Creators report by Cagabe, 96% of content creators around the world make less than $100,000 a year. Only 4% of those who exceed this level are in line with data published by Aspire in 2022.
According to the same report, the vast majority of content creators do not make nearly $15,000 a year, while other data shows that about 90% of videos posted on YouTube do not reach 1,000 views at all.
While children imagine that success starts with a phone, a camera, and a single video, the reality is more complicated: millions of people compete fiercely, and only a few succeed in achieving a high income, often relying on multiple sources of income, such as sponsorships, ads, subscriptions, and selling products or services, rather than on the revenue of videos alone.
Why do money and fame top children's dreams?
Remarkably, the children's responses, according to the study, included almost no reference to creativity or enjoyment of content creation as an end in itself. The answers were straightforward and similar: "Because they make a lot of money" or "Because they're famous." Even children who chose other professions, such as soccer players, actors or singers, justified their choices by almost the same logic: fame and wealth.
This mindset reflects the digital environment in which this generation grew up. The child often sees only the final result, he sees a huge number of followers, a luxury car, gifts from companies, and constant travel, but he does not see the years of trying, the hours of filming and editing, the dozens of clips that did not achieve any popularity, or the pressures and competitions that accompany the continuous work on the platforms. Fame seems to him to be a quick and easy success.
Family of three mother and two kids making social media content video on smartphone, modern young mother recording children bloggers dancing in front of phone at home. Blogging and small children
How do algorithms make a dream of fame?
There is a fundamental difference between a child watching an influential clip once, and finding himself surrounded by dozens of similar clips every day without looking for them himself.
That's where the algorithms that platforms like YouTube and TikTok rely on come in, they don't display content randomly, but they constantly learn from each click, view, and length of time on the video, and then recommend more similar content. As a result, a child may find themselves in a recurring cycle of clips that talk about quick success, richness, and fame, as they often achieve high rates of engagement and viewing.
In this way, platforms not only showcase these models but give them greater opportunities to go viral, while content that tells stories of long learning or failure that precedes success often gets less visibility. This may partly explain why children in different countries see the shiny final picture of success, while missing the long road that preceded it.
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How do parents deal with the child "YouTuber"?
The same study offers a different example: One student, who lives in a rural town more than 1,300 miles from the nearest coast, said it was online videos that inspired him to dream of becoming a marine biologist. This means that the internet may indeed open up new career prospects for children, if combined with inspiration and knowledge, not just the pursuit of fame.
But what the researchers recommend is to help a child see beyond the screen — the skills behind successful content creators, such as photography, writing, editing, marketing, and time management, rather than reducing success to the number of followers or the size of profits.
The study also suggests that children and adolescents say they learn more about their future careers from direct conversations with parents, teachers and professionals than they do from traditional career guidance questionnaires in schools, which some have described as "a waste of time" and do not reflect their interests or reality.
This suggests that quiet dialogue with the child may be more effective than prevention or warning, especially when parents ask questions that help them think, such as: How long does it take to build a successful channel? And what if the first or even the tenth video doesn't work?
Smart Asian child Point finger at head using AI technology, wearing headphones, learning with artificial intelligence assistant at home, symbolizing futuristic education and digital innovation.
When a child becomes a content creator
The concerns were not limited to the impact of content on children's dreams, but also extended to children who themselves became high-profit content creators under the management of their parents. In France, in 2020, parliament passed a law that gives children working as online influencers the same legal protections as children working in the acting and modeling industries.
The law regulates working hours, requires a portion of a child's income to be deposited into an account that he or she can dispose of until he reaches the age of majority, and gives him the right to request the deletion of content that appears in it in the future. The legislation came in response to growing concerns about the economic exploitation of children as the digital content industry expands.
This study does not say that an entire generation has become superficial or interested only in fame and money, but rather reveals that children construct their perceptions of the future in an environment radically different from that in which their parents were raised. While schools continue to offer traditional career paths, algorithms spend long hours each day delivering different models of success, often more focused on outcomes than the journey that preceded them.
The task is not to convince a child to give up on their dream of becoming a creator or celebrity, but to help them see the big picture; to realize that behind every success seems to be years of learning, trying, failing, and working hard, details that don't usually appear in a one-minute video.
