Knowledge

Anything Wrong With American And British Kids Wanting To Be YouTubers Rather Than Astronauts?

During 2019, a survey conducted on 3,000 children from the US, UK and China by Ars Technica which was sponsored by the LEGO company revealed that US and UK children would rather be YouTubers than astronauts when they grow up.

The survey concluded that this was an alarming sign of how attitudes toward scientific frontiers have changed across the generations. This is because during the preceding generations, being an astronaut was the dream career of many children.

But the results even get darker according to those which conducted the survey. Being an astronaut was the least choice of career for five other career choices. These other career choices were in order: teacher, professional athlete, musician and of course, astronaut.

However, Chinese children’s number one career choice or aspiration was to be an astronaut. A whooping 56% of the surveyed Chinese children wanted to be astronauts while only 16% want to be YouTubers.

It is understandable that US and British parents would be a little worried by the results of the survey. For today’s parents who were previously children in the previous generations, being a YouTuber might not sound like a career at all.

But why are children really attracted to a YouTubing career? Probably because they grew up with YouTube and they might even see their friends and even idols succeeding and getting rich and famous off it. Compare this with today’s children’s limited exposure to astronauts and space in general.

But a child wanting to be a YouTuber signifies something about a child. That this child wants fame and fortune over prestige. Sure, being an astronaut is prestigious, but you’re still an employee working for someone else with a limited salary.

Being a YouTuber is very entrepreneurial. You can become a YouTuber with little to no education and capital. The fame and income potential is also practically limitless. Compare this to being an astronaut which needs a high educational attainment but pays a capped salary.

Although the survey was conducted on children form the US, UK and China, I believe that there are still many more children in the world who want to be YouTubers or digital content creators. Many children of today have already realized that being an astronaut is not as desirable as it was promoted to be.

For one, very few countries have space programs which caps the number of astronauts. There are even fewer space flights which further caps the number of astronauts needed. Then there the high expectations to be an astronaut, from high technical education, being super fit, to long years of experience.

Speaking of high technical education attainment, of course, many children are discouraged by these requirements. This is especially considering that many of the famous tech billionaires which children know about don’t even have college degrees to begin with.

Speaking of billionaires, being an astronaut won’t make you a millionaire which so many children want to be these days. This is because children see millionaire and even billionaire celebrities online who don’t even have to study and work hard for a living.

Children today have enough knowledge of space to know that being in space is very dangerous. Many children have watched enough science fiction and space disaster movies to know that even a slight mishap in space can get you killed.

As already stated, you could become a YouTuber and become a multimillionaire even at a very young age. In fact, many child oriented YouTube videos regularly attract a lot of views. For example, we have the YouTube Channel: Ryan’s World which is hosted by a young child which regularly makes millions of dollars in earnings a year.

There is also no educational requirement for starting a YouTube channel. You could simply upload anything you want (subject to YouTube’s terms like no pornography or disturbing material) and that’s it. You’re now a YouTuber.

You could also start a YouTube Channel very cheaply with little to no cost. At the minimum, all you need is a smartphone/mobile to create a YouTube video. In fact, many YouTubers just use their smartphone/mobile camera to record YouTube videos.

Since YouTubers are their own bosses and their own businesses, there is practically no limit to their earning potential unlike a salaried employee. For example, the YouTube personality Mr. Beastand his YouTube Channel is believed to be worth billions of US dollars.

Americans, British and similar English language speaking nationalities have an advantage when it comes to the online content business. This is because the language of the internet is primarily in English. The children from these countries know it and they are capitalizing on it.

Being caucasian looking especially for the women also offers a lot of advantage for people in these countries. Though times are changing, the world media is still largely dominated by caucasian looking people and their children know it.

Western culture especially the American culture is still very influential in many parts of the world. For example, many people from many parts of the world watch American entertainment like movies, news, sports and the likes as if they are part of the American culture.

YouTube is also second only to Google Search when it comes to internet popularity. Many people who want to be popular on a global basis naturally want to be in YouTube because it is watched on a global basis.

As already said, western culture still dominates on a global basis, especially American Culture. Even though for example, China has become the top manufacturing destination in the world, American economic might still dominates the world.

Not all people want to be YouTubers and this is where potentially all the astronauts would come from. An interesting note is that even astronauts and the space agencies of today are also producing YouTube videos. This means that there is no conflict in being a YouTuber and being an astronaut.

In fact, many of the smartest people we have today have YouTube Channels. For example, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist, became very popular when he made science related YouTube content.

This means that people with science backgrounds and careers could become very famous YouTubers also. For example, The YouTube Channel Veritasium is a very popular science based channel which is hosted by a very well educated science degree graduate.

You might say that there are many YouTubers out there who instead of dumbing down their viewers with useless video content are instead making their viewers more knowledgeable and smarter.

It is actually the decision of the YouTuber and their viewers if they want to be dumbed down by producing and watching useless content or become smarter by producing and watching useful content.

Many people today including young children don’t really aspire to one day become astronauts just to see space. This is because these days, there are already companies that can enable someone to see space without requiring someone to be an astronaut first.

These companies charge a high fee and only very rich people can afford to go to space. However, there are more avenues in becoming rich than being an astronaut and more people want to be become rich so they can see space rather than being an astronaut.

It just might happen that someday, a YouTuber might see space using their YouTube earnings to pay for the trip. A YouTuber doesn’t need to be an astronaut to see space. They just need to be a very rich YouTuber.

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