YouTube's Gender Gap
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Why More Girls Aren't Becoming YouTube Stars
Becoming a full-time creator is one of the most popular career goals among kids today. Nearly 30 percent of kids ages 8 to 12 listed “YouTuber” as their top career choice in a global survey conducted by Harris Poll and toymaker Lego. A Morning Consult survey of Gen Z and millennials in the United States found that more than half of 13-to-38-year-olds (54 percent%) wanted to become social media influencers.
To meet this demand, after-school programs and summer camps like Creator Camp have cropped up to teach young kids content creation skills. Creator Camp is a summer program that teaches children ages 6 to 13 how to chart a path in the creator economy. It was founded by a group of Gen Z creators who met through a film program at their high school. Thousands of campers have attended programs at their nearly two dozen locations across the country.
In addition to programs like Creator Camp, traditional summer camps have started adding YouTube tracks and classes. A slew of universities have added content creation courses including Cornell, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and East Carolina University.
But the students who enroll in these classes and programs are overwhelmingly male. This is something I’ve heard anecdotally for years, but the numbers seem to bear it out. Cazden Morrison, a co-founder of Creator Camp told me that their program has been collecting statistics and recently found that, out of thousands of campers, boys outnumber girls 2:1.