Surveys now find that becoming a famous influencer ranks among children's most desired careers. I consider this ambition, and the culture producing it, a largely negative development.
It is not hard to see the attraction, and a fair assessment admits it. Online platforms have opened careers that bypass old gatekeepers: young people with talent in comedy, music or teaching can reach audiences directly, and a small minority build genuine creative businesses from nothing but a phone and persistence.
The trouble is what the dream does to the majority who chase it. First, the odds are brutally misleading. The visible winners conceal millions earning nothing, yet the fantasy of effortless wealth draws teenagers away from education and skills that would actually secure their futures — a lottery mistaken for a career plan. Second, the pursuit itself is psychologically corrosive. Building an audience means turning oneself into a product: measuring self-worth in likes, chasing algorithms, courting controversy for attention and surrendering privacy piece by piece. Anxiety among young heavy users of these platforms has risen in step with this culture. Third, the values it teaches point backwards — visibility over contribution, image over substance — so that being known has replaced being good at something as the definition of success, a shift whose costs society is only beginning to count.
In conclusion, while social media has genuinely opened doors for a creative few, the fame it dangles before the young is statistically a mirage and psychologically a trap. A culture that teaches children to be watched rather than to be useful is heading somewhere worse, and I regard this development as negative.