My friend's ten-year-old daughter Julia has a new hobby. Like many of her school pals, she hopes to become a video blogger—a "vlogger”. She's started to record clips of herself for others to watch and "like". She showed me a few, and then gave me a list of famous vloggers to watch. Their names sounded so bizarre. But they are totally familiar to age girls.
Like an earnest marketing executive, Julia explained to me that it was all a matter of numbers. If her videos are viewed 40,000 times on YouTube, she can have advertisements placed on them; 100,000, and companies would start sending her products to promote. One million and she'd be a YouTube star.
This seemed a peculiar phenomenon but Julia is not alone. In fact, her dream is perfectly normal for her generation: one in three children between the ages of 11 and 16 have uploaded a video to YouTube. Who can blame them? Vlogging can now be a well-paid career. Unlike the more traditional dream jobs—pop star, doctor, footballer, scientist—it doesn't take much effort. All it requires is a smartphone and gallons of youthful self-confidence.
There're plenty of people with that. The 27-year-old British vlogger Zoella has made millions from her channel. Ryan, the six-year-old American host of the YouTube channel RyanToysReview, made £8.5 million last year from reviewing toys and sweets.
Popular genres on YouTube are the "haul video"—where a vlogger reviews recently received items—and the "unboxing video", in which products are opened and then discussed. The message is: "I've got this, and you haven't." And then comes, “here's where to buy it”. What the vloggers seem to have worked out is that the internet is a giant sales opportunity.
Not every girl can be Zoella, so the real winners are the tech companies, who are constantly improving their systems to extract the maximum revenue from their audiences. They are keen to show their desire to help protect children from the darker areas of the internet. "YouTube Kids" is an app （应用软件）which is meant to filter out inappropriate videos, but that is easier said than done. Algorithms （计算程序）haven't yet developed the moral sense to know what is good for children.
My friend said she was concerned about her daughter's vlogging but that it was difficult to intervene, for most girls in her class were obsessed with it. The girls all hope they might earn millions, travel the world and become famous.
17. Julia believes that her videos on YouTube can make her very _______ .