To all parents out there with teens (or even toddlers and younger adults) consuming or creating content on YouTube, this article is a must for you.
Let me explain: on my 70th, 1st of September this year, I embarked on a journey, an experiment, so to speak, triggered by a close friend’s loss. She lost her daughter to suicide. Her loss is social media-related.
I’ll never divulge the details here, but suffice it to say that a young woman, bright, intelligent, privileged, and so so happy (we all thought), offed herself after demonitization from the platform.
As a retired technologist, this brought me back. As a writer disgusted with the publishing industry, this brought me back. As a human being, this hurt me deeply. I, too, have suffered a suicide or two in my lineage.
The Experiment
So, I decided to become a YouTube content creator myself to see how bad (or good) being a young content creator is these days and on the myriad of platforms where all the content flows in 2023. As mentioned, lots of test cases and content were created; see here for more details on the mechanics of the experiment and how I ran it.
The Hypothesis
The hypothesis for my experiment is thus:
Being a content creator on YouTube can be debilitating at best and kill you at its worst.
Note: I forgot to tell you that I am a fake scientist with no degrees remotely related to sociology or biology.
So, I began a double-blind experiment by creating about 50 bits of YouTube content, a few dozen community posts, and other activities required as a content creator. The entire shebang, I went all in. This has been a three-month non-clinical self-trial.
Sidebar: I’ve been writing about this creator experience here and there, with very little attention being paid, and now I am going for it. I will see these words on the front of WAPO or NYT before I die; mark my words (or restack them): techBros must die! I am so fighting mad, and you should be as well if you are a parent on this planet right now.
The Results
I won’t bore you with charts, graphs, and statistics collected, tabulated, and analyzed during my three months as a creator on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, Facebook Original, Facebook Reels, and more that I can’t remember, sorry, too much discord out there…oh that’s right, Discord! That one, too.
That’s a lot of data and analysis to present—a boatload. So I won’t. F it. Here is a bulleted list, as I know every parent loves a good PowerPoint:
The profession of content creation is valid, decent, engaging, and fulfilling. The platforms your child’s content runs on are nothing of the sort, nor are the CEOs and tech bros that design these platforms; they have no interest in your child except to extract as much gelt as possible.
Being a content creator is almost magical; how do you describe it? I’ve been everything in my life, from floor swabber to AI researcher, and I have never had so much fun working in the past three months as I have in 30 years. The downside is that I invested thousands of dollars in this new small business, and during the first quarter, my revenue was only 22 US dollars and 54 cents! USD 24.54, after some USD 4,000 and counting now spent. Even if I were 18 and did not give a crap about ROI or knew what it meant, I’d say screw this.
Being a content creator, while fun and freeing due to flex time hours, its work! But not the traditional kind of wortk that an artist, writer, radio/TV announcer, or media person would ever deal with, well, not in any conventional way. Methods of online self-promotion are numerous and expensive in terms of time and money spent. Getting trapped into a mile-long subscription list of helper apps is easy. Too easy.
The work is strenuous. Content creation is athletic. I monitored my health for the entire three months using my watch. I am a 70-year-old male in perfect health as of my 70th birthday when I began running this experiment into the unknown. My health charts plunged, and many rings were left unfilled; enough said.
The work is all-consuming. No matter what the content job title is, it’s the same. Make-up artist, Classical Music explainer, Box-opening reviewer, ASMR Mime (look that one up if you don’t know), and the hundreds more new job classifications online are all “same same.” You know what they do; you scroll through it all every day.
You are mentally engaged with your work 24/7; there is no avoiding that. You see, hear, smell, touch, and immediately think of the next show, episode, or shot in the video going up next. You live and breathe this kind of work!
The work can be physically debilitating, but not if your content is gymnastics, another sport, or a strenuous activity where you film yourself. If you are not creating content about the body moving, well, at best, you are a couch potato in front of the laptop, never seeing the light of day, or worse, doing an online cooking show (with pets) as I do, and not seeing the light of day unless I run with my wolf every time I feel anxious about my job.
The work is overwhelming at times. Overwhelmed, I freaked out many times a day; each time, due to crap imposed by Youtube and all the other platforms that I was posting on, they began to overwhelm me with offers to spend more or restrict and ban me over and over. They will drive you mad, and the lack of transparency on policies and procedures as a platform provider for your content is almost criminal.
So, both mentally and physically, I was beaten and left beaten up. Maybe your child won’t or isn’t that weak or timid; I am 70, after all.
IN SUMMARY
Well, dear parent or concerned and diligent reader (you made it this far), here is where any good scientist would summarize the findings, interpret the data in the context of the hypothesis, discuss the results’ implications, and suggest directions for future research.
Let me cut through all that crap; as a parent myself, I know you have no time for that. So here it is, again in PowerPoint format:
Content creation is a valid and worthwhile activity and potential career path for teens, young adults, heck, anyone. Even my 7-year-old niece is into it, and her content is good.
As a small business, the entry costs are high, and the return is zilch until you hit the jackpot. More on this topic of Casino games in a later update to this guide, as how things are rigged is an entire chapter, maybe a book; I got some numbers to prove it!
You can be thrown off any platform at any moment for a long list of reasons, most out all of the content creator’s control. In short, there are no workplace rights or other employee benefits. You are at the mercy of the techBros 100 percent; content creators better plan accordingly, like have back-up employment, or else. Not everyone becomes a Mr. Beast. Not everyone wins the two billion dollar Powerball.
Mentally, the job is way more challenging than one would expect by just viewing a creator’s content. No, you don’t see the labor that went in, as with all creative endeavors, but the difference today is that there is no HR department at YouTube to help you with insurance, retirement or health plans while you are creating for Google and no med station to run to when you start having a breakdown or migraine.
I further hypothesize the longer one continues to create online for these platforms, the more one’s mental state declines. The results could be mild anxiety to suicide. I know of cases at both ends of this spectrum (myself and my friend’s daughter). But I have no charts and graphs to prove this ancillary hypothesis right now, only more articles (in my head) and raw data on my laptop. So you must wait.
Now, as a diligent fake scientist, let me “draw final inferences and suggest future research.”
My Scientific Conclusion
Here is my scientific conclusion after letting the experiment run for three months and then examining all the data and details:
Don’t let anyone you know or love create content on YouTube without them knowing the risks and pitfalls described above and without “trust but verify” monitoring.
In addition, younger ones should be monitored as you did when they first got a phone or began using social media, even if they are 27. At least for a few months, then periodic check-ins. This must be a serious topic of discussion at many dinner tables of the content creator.
So, for future research, please follow along on this stack; this is not a conclusion per se but a burning quest for me and, hopefully, an interest for you and your related content creator.
Stay strong and best of lu…. no, not luck, reasoned action!
In addition to sharing insights, I’m involved in a cause providing pizza to underprivileged children in Kathmandu, Nepal. If you wish to support them, please contribute through my [Buy Me a Coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/nepalihipph) page; there is an excellent video on my simple project. Each donation brings joy to these children that you would not believe (but I will send you pics). Your generosity, big or small, makes a difference. Thank you for any support you can offer.
This article is dedicated to Bo Burnham, one of the younger people that, at 70, I kind of worry about:
Great post. I am not motivated enough to do that experiment, but I have a couple of thoughts.
Back in 2016, I was between jobs (I was shown the door, and I took 6 months off) and tried to go consultant for product management. It was really hard, and a friend who had been in consulting for 20ish years confided in me that you spend almost as much time self promoting, marketing yourself, and looking for the next gig. That is not who I am. I just want to do the work, and move the needle. The creators I interact with and follow seem to have to work very hard to be constantly promoting themselves, and expanding their reach or else their income dries up. That is damn hard work.
Second, I have to wonder if the creator economy is an artifact of the decade plus of ZIRP* unleashing torrents of investor cash seeking any returns, that drove the platforms and the monetization.
If that is true, I expect the creator economy to become more difficult to break into, and like many MLM's there will be a pyramid with a few at the top sweeping most of the $$$ off the table, and an enormous population of the undercard, in the system with the hope to strike it big, but realistically, the odds of big success are growing slimmer every day.
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* = Zero Interest Rate Policies