"I Want to be a YouTuber When I Grow Up"
What This Career Choice Tells Us About Children's Use of Technology
“Ms. Gruskin, when I grow up I want to be a YouTuber!”
No matter what age I have taught, the quote above represents far and away the most common career aspiration I hear from my students. At times it feels as if we are raising a whole generation of future YouTubers. And I’ll be honest, it makes me crazy! Whatever happened to the days of kids wanting to be teachers, firefighters, police officers, or literally anything else?
Not only do my kids have this specific career aspiration, but they also act as if they are already engaged in the career. They use the slang, they pull silly pranks on one another, and they dance more than they walk. I don’t understand half of what my kids say and do, but they do it all day long.
At first it may seem strange that this specific career choice has so suddenly and so completely taken over the dreams of our children. Is it really that appealing? In reality, understanding children’s fascination with a career as a YouTuber, from an evolutionary perspective, gives us insights into what role technology is playing in our kids’ lives and what we can and should do about it.
Evolutionary Context and Adult Models
For most of evolutionary history, learning was highly contextualized to the small tribe to which a child belonged. There were no schools or special locations away from adults where children were relegated to during the day. Instead, children moved around freely and saw adults engaged in the tasks necessary for daily living. The result was that children saw the skills that were valued and necessary and were thereby motivated to mimic these adult activities through play with mixed-age peers (see Gray, 2013). This play was the way that children acquired necessary knowledge and skills. Due to the rapidness of cultural change, this observation and mimicry is still the way that our children are motivated to learn today.
In modern societies, however, kids go to school and adults go to work. While at school, kids don’t see the day-to-day activities that their moms, dads, relatives, and neighbors engage in. There is a very clear and firm distinction between adult work and childhood learning. For many children, adult life and work is a mystery.
This mysterious adult business is a case of evolutionary mismatch. Children’s brains expect to learn through observation and mimicry of adults, but in the modern contexts, that opportunity is largely missing.
Impacts of Technology
The issue above is exacerbated by the addition of technology—specifically video streaming apps like YouTube.
When I was growing up, I remember nearly every single kid in my first grade class wanted to be a teacher. This is what we knew and, therefore, what we aspired to be. We saw teachers every day. As we got a little older, career choices became more diverse. My classmates’ interests expanded to fire fighters, cooks, cashiers, police officers, astronauts, cowboys, etc. The common theme was that these were still careers that were seen in the world around us or in the movies and TV we were watching.
It should be no surprise that kids today—who are still shaped by evolution to mimic skills they see as important—mimic what they see on YouTube. For many kids, YouTubers are some of the only adults that they are seeing and paying attention to. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center shows the nearly ubiquitous use of YouTube by children of all ages. In the study, it was reported that 89% of parents with children under eleven say that their children watch videos on YouTube. What is even more staggering is 53% of those parents say their children use the platform at least once per day or more (Auxier et. al., 2020).
Today’s kids are so glued to screens that they are missing out on the world around them. When kids sit in a cart at the supermarket with an iPad and headphones, they miss seeing the cashier. At a restaurant they miss the cooks and waiters. When watching videos in the car they don’t see the road crews, police officers, truck drivers, fire fighters or anything else outside their window. They literally ignore the world that is happening around them in favor of the digital world. As a result, their only role models are the digital influencers that they see so often.
Additionally, so much of what is on YouTube and other digital platforms is fake or negative. Kids are seeing highlighted snippets of someone’s life and making the assumption that what they are seeing is real. Worse, they are often seeing bad behavior that is done solely for attention and likes. These are not the skills or ideas that will help them grow up into well-rounded and productive adults, regardless of their career path.
Takeaways
There are so many ways that technology impacts children and their education. There is good that can be done with technology, but there is a lot of harm that can be done as well. Many of these issues will be explored in later posts.
As with most things, I advocate for technology use within moderation. Importantly, this issue goes beyond the classroom . Thus, I am offering takeaways again for two different parties: parents and teachers. Collective action of both stakeholders will help to minimize the harm from excessive YouTube consumption in children.
Parents:
Limit screentime for young children.
Model and discuss adult activities that kids miss while in school.
Be aware of what types of videos children are viewing on YouTube and other platforms.
Be aware of the iPad babysitter. It may be easy to entertain your child with technology at a restaurant or while in the car, but be aware that there is a lot that kids learn by engaging in these experiences.
Teachers:
Use class time to expose children to careers and activities done by adults. Funny enough, YouTube can actually be a great tool for this is used intentionally.
Explicitly teach and model digital citizenship skills.
Provide opportunities for adults to come into the school and talk to children. Seeing fire fighters, police officers, farmers, engineers, etc., can provide meaningful role models for children. The same goal can be achieved through field trips.
In reality, being a YouTuber is a modern career choice. It is likely that some of the children I teach will go on to follow this path. The reason I am concerned about this issue has less to do with my children’s actual career paths and more to do with what the quantity of children interested in this career signals. Kids spend so much time online that they miss out on the physical world around them. They lose the opportunity to learn from real-world adult role models and instead copy fake or negative behavior they see from YouTubers. Being mindful of technology use, and the quantity of technology consumption, is critical to raising children who are citizens of the world, not just of the digital world.
References
Auxier, B., Anderson, M., Perrin, A., & Turner, E. (July 2020). Parenting children in the age of screens. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2020/07/PI_2020.07.28_kids-and-screens_FINAL.pdf
Gray, P. (2013). Free to learn. New York, NY: Basic Books.