Have you ever thought that YouTube could be your career? If done successfully, one can make a salary of over 10 million dollars in your lifetime. Similar to musicians or movie stars, YouTubers use their talents to entertain people of all ages.  Channels contain a range of genres including comedy, vlogs and gaming.YouTube Red was created in 2015 for movie and music access within the app. If you create a YouTube channel or have a video idea, you might just be the next internet sensation!

Approximately 86,400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every day. As of April 2016, over two thousand YouTube channels have 1 million subscribers or more. For one hundred thousand subscribers, YouTubers receive a silver play button award, for one million subscribers, a gold play button, and for 10 million, a diamond play button. The world of social media has grown tremendously throughout the 21st century and Internet fame has been taken to a whole new level. The social world has classified YouTubers as “Internet celebrities” referencing their fame and success. Over the past several years, award shows, such as the Teen Choice Awards, originally aimed towards music and movies, have recognized social media stars with categories such as “Choice YouTuber” and “Choice Web Star.” YouTube creates a rewind video of the year’s trends and popular YouTubers. In 2016, these included Dwayne Johnson, Lauren Riihimaki (LaurDIY), Lilly Singh (iisuperwomanii), Casey Neistat and many more.

Internet stars gain attention from teenagers because their videos is right at their fingertips.  Currently, over 95 percent  of Americans have cell phones with access to the Internet, which includes YouTube (Pew Research Center). Why are people attracted to this? The Internet provides a space to be digitally innovative and share opinions and new ideas with the world. One can be creative, film their lives or record their favorite activities, and people love to watch it!

YouTubers are creative, persistent and passionate people that choose to use most of their free time to make and edit videos for others to enjoy. Stars first gain inspiration from existing creators, peers and influences in their personal lives to make videos that viewers would relate to or like to watch. Every YouTube channel started with one video and one subscriber. Fan bases continue to grow and attract more viewers. Simply by word of mouth, a YouTube channel can explode in popularity overnight.

To teenagers, social media celebrities are more popular and relevant than Hollywood stars. Without YouTube, there are fewer opportunities to become a traditional Hollywood celebrity, and it is more difficult to become famous in the movie world. Limited roles allow a few people to make it in the movie business. The Internet, including YouTube, is easy and available to everyone. It is much simpler to make a trending video or two and become famous than to star in a big Hollywood movie and YouTube viewers determine if you are popular or not, not directors and producers. A future movie star must go through many auditions to earn a role, but a YouTuber can be successful despite the quality of their product. Teenagers recognize social media stars more than celebrities because rather than watching TV or a movie in their free time, it is much easier to watch a YouTube video because it is right there on their smartphone.

Many YouTubers are regular people that have lives that their viewers can relate to, while traditional celebrities can seem distant and unavailable and teens can contact both celebrities and YouTubers on Instagram and Twitter through posts and comments.

Ultimately, YouTubers gain more attention than Hollywood celebrities from all ages, especially teenagers, because of the convenience of the Internet, cellphones, and YouTube. Several years ago, no one would have dreamed of becoming a celebrity easily by using the Internet and uploading content to an app available for all to enjoy.