Kids prep for YouTube careers at content creator camp

Do you remember what your dream job was as a kid? We’re guessing that “YouTuber” was not on the list. But that was then.

Vlogger/YouTuber was the top career choice for almost 30% of 8-to-12-year-olds who were surveyed a few years back. Across the country, camps and afterschool programs are cropping up to teach them how.

Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz recently visited one. The newspaper made a video about kids making videos with the help of campgoers who made it known that animated fire is in. “Viewers are going to watch it because who doesn’t like flames coming at them?” one kid said.

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Lorenz about what kids learn at Creator Camp in Katy, Texas. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Taylor Lorenz: Creator Camp is kind of the most famous one, which opened in Texas about three years ago. They’ve got many locations now. And they’ve seen thousands of kids come through. And what these kids are taught is basically digital skills. They’re taught video editing, scriptwriting, stage direction, everything you’d need to do to produce a compelling YouTube video.

Lily Jamali: And speaking of all this, many of the kids that you spoke with are actually younger than the minimum age allowed on some of these platforms. In YouTube’s case, that would be 13.

Lorenz: Yeah, I mean, this has been kind of a tricky issue because of course kids can use these platforms, they just need parental oversight. So none of these kids have channels that their parents don’t have control over because they’re too young. It’s like how Kim Kardashian “runs” North West’s account — her daughter’s underage [but] Kim oversees that account. Once you’re 13, you don’t have to have parental oversight, of course. You can sign up for your own account online.

Jamali: So earlier this year, the surgeon general put out an advisory warning about the harms of social media, specifically for minors. How much of a concern was that for the parents of the kids that you talked to?

Lorenz: Not a huge concern. One thing all the parents kind of talked about is just this sense of “this is the new world that’s coming. I don’t want my kid to be behind.” It’s really hard because I think if you keep your kid off the internet, you keep your kid off social media until they’re a teenager, suddenly they’re a teenager and they don’t have the same skills. It’s a tough balance to kind of strike.

Jamali: And I also wanted to just mention one of the moms that you spoke with, who said how she enrolled two of her kids in these camps to gain digital skills, to basically have that versatile toolbox, if you will, so that it’s not just about YouTube, it’s about a lot more.

Lorenz: Exactly. And actually, I think that mom herself has a podcast, and some of the moms and dads who were there, they work in multimedia environments. Well, some parents, at least, especially the mom of those two kids, were saying, “Hey, look, I want my kid to have these skills. These are not things that are being taught in school. And yet, there’s this massive, half-a-trillion-dollar content creator industry, and the tech industry is growing, so why not put my kid in a camp where they can learn some of these really valuable, marketable skills?”

Jamali: And just in the time that you spent out in the field, did you get the sense that some of the kids were being pressured by their parents to do this? Or was this really coming from within the kids themselves?

Lorenz: Oh no, 150% from the kids. I mean, yeah, a lot of the parents were kind of like, “We don’t really know what’s up. Like, we don’t get it, but we want our kids to be happy.” And then some of them — Colin, one kid who was so adorable, his father is actually a TV journalist. And so he had grown up watching his father produce television segments. And so I think that had given him an interest in video very young. I thought it was interesting, just as a journalist, you know, here’s the next-generation journalist, potentially, creating video packages.

Jamali: Colin’s a lot of fun. He’s 9 years old, one of the folks who appears early in your piece, and I love this quote from him. He says, “YouTubers make a lot, a lot of money,” explaining why he’s interested in all of it.

Lorenz: Well, that was not why he was interested. What he really wanted to do is go to the border. His father has done a lot of reporting on the border crisis in Texas, where these kids all live very close, not too far from the border. And so he talked at length about wanting to go to the border and make videos and help the people there and help the immigrants. And, you know, he knew that there was a big housing crisis. And he wanted to basically use YouTube fame to get enough money to 3D print homes for people crossing the border. So, again, I think it’s like, yes, the kids are going to make these like sort of throwaway comments about money. But when you ask them, “Well, why do you want that money?” it’s really revealing and interesting. And I think it just shows kind of how people view online attention and what they would do with YouTube fame.

Jamali: Yeah, that’s interesting. And you have a bunch of examples like this in your piece.

Lorenz: Chloe was another one. Chloe, she talked about wanting this Barbie Dreamhouse. She wanted a house in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower, but she also spoke about being bullied and the struggles that she had in school to kind of meet people. And she talked about “haters,” people who were mean to her, and she felt like if she had online attention, she could have this whole friend network online and she wouldn’t feel so lonely at school. And a lot of the ways that these kids were talking about loneliness really shocked me because I think there is kind of a loneliness crisis for young people these days that it seems like they feel very isolated. And it’s interesting to me that YouTube was sort of viewed as the solution. I think kids have a very good understanding of the fact that the internet is vast. I was happy to hear that they hadn’t internalized it. Like, a lot of them weren’t, “I’m a loser, and I like this thing that no one else likes.” They were like, “I know on the internet there are other people that share my interests, and I just need to find them.” And so I kind of was heartened by that.

Jamali: And as somebody who covers the internet so closely for a living, Taylor, I’m curious from you, when you see some of these motivations and the loneliness that a lot of these kids are expressing or talking about at a really young age, are you thinking, “Gosh, YouTube is not the answer,” or do you think maybe it is?

Lorenz: I think, actually, YouTube can be the answer. I mean, look, I say this as a former art school kid, I think it’s really valuable to have creative outlets. And I’ve made the majority of my friends online. I made them on social media, actually from Tumblr, back in the day. And so I think that you can develop really powerful and meaningful friendships. Now, should that be the only way that you’re communicating and connecting with people? No, absolutely not. But once your friendships are mediated by these online spaces, you can get really obsessed with the sort of the following aspect and getting more subscribers and clout and internet attention. And as we know, as well, like, you’re still developing your sense of self and your identity. And so another thing I know from reporting on generations of child influencers is it can really warp that. So say you are really interested in cooking when you’re 13 and you develop this cooking channel, but by the time you’re 16, you’re not actually interested in cooking anymore, but you have all of your subscribers now. You have 20,000 subscribers that want you to only produce cooking content. When you produce noncooking content, they get very upset or they leave you mean comments. That can all affect your perception of yourself and it can really warp things. So I don’t think it should be the only way, but I think it’s a fun, healthy outlet for expression if done in moderation, but shouldn’t be the only way that you’re making friends.