Are unrealistic ideas normal in young teens?

[RoseMartha]

My teens are under what I feel is a false impression that they can leave school and become social media influencers and be earning £100k a year by posting a few videos. No amount of explaining that it is not as easy as it looks makes any difference.

They want a better job than me but not prepared to work hard at school to get their exams. All I want is for them to try their best, it doesnt matter about top grades. They are very apathetic about school work and homework and if I did not stay on top of what they had. They would do none of it.

They think they don't need qualifications because they will be rich and famous quickly.

I have explained that most famous people have completed their education and named a few as examples.

As they are teens and think they know everything they think I am talking rubbish. And were horrified when I said they will need to go to college after they leave school. (Couple of years to go yet).

We discussed courses they might like at this point. But I think it went over their heads. I dont expect them to know what job they want to go in. But they need to start to think about what interests them apart from being on their phone taking selfies.

I think part if the problem is the SM platform and content itself. As well as peer pressure and the generation they are growing up in.

Is anyone else's teens like this?

I work with a lot of teens as part of my job and literally every one I have worked with in the past five years has told me they intend to be a Youtuber or social media influencer when they are older. 10 years ago it was rapper or footballer.. They do grow out of it in the end (usually when they post a few things and only get 12 followers! ) .. but yes it’s very unrealistic for all but the very occasional one and frustrating if they are giving up on education too.

Well mine wants to be an interior designer which is slightly more realistic, but she also says she's moving into her own apartment in the city centre when she's 18, and has already got a Pinterest board with decor ideas She will afford this with a part time job working at a Lidl bakery I think it's quite sweet really, but yeah, very unrealistic.

Sounds very frustrating, OP. Are they both quite young teens? If so, hopefully they'll get a bit of a reality check as they grow up a bit. I'd be a bit more concerned if they're older and still thinking like this.

Of course, it's possible that they could become highly successful influencers, but the odds are pretty low so they definitely need a back-up plan.

My 15yo isn't like this. She has a very realistic outlook, knows what she wants to do and is taking sensible steps towards it. However, she does performing arts as a hobby, and virtually all of her drama friends believe that they're going to have successful careers in acting. DD thinks that some of them are really talented, but is concerned that few have any kind of plan B. So perhaps it isn't unusual for them to have completely unrealistic expectations, but you do need to make them see sense if you can. Not to squash their dreams at all - someone has to succeed in those fields, after all - but to get them to think carefully about alternatives.

Sorry, just seen from your title that they are both young teens. I think it's probably pretty common in younger kids tbh. I'm sure they'll grow out of it.

Oh god yeah, they're all the same. DS and his pals even had T-shirts printed up for their (as yet unset up but still completely going to be famous) YouTube channel. I still think DS thinks 'being a famous Youtuber' is in his future but he's quite immature.

Best plan is to encourage them to set up a channel. A few weeks of 15 followers should sort them out.

Normal? Not sure mine are pretty sensible, one is still on track for the job she planned from 14, too outing to say more. The other has autism so challenging but is sensibly looking at things that they can do

No, my teen (16) and her friends are focused on their GCSEs, getting part time work over the summer and starting 6th form. They'd laugh at anyone who thought they could make a fortune as an influencer.

I think it is pretty normal to go through phases of pipe dreams. (previously it was footballers or pop stars or before that film stars etc)
I think the secret is not to crush them, but to say something like
"Good plan, always good to dream big, but remember it is a pretty short lived career - what will you do afterwards ?"

or
"What will you live off until you make it big?"

etc
etc.

One of mine wanted to be an actor (and did drama etc) and I always encouraged him to go for it if he really wanted to, but pointed out that 99% or actors were unemployed for 99% of the time and that if he was filling in with minimum wage type jobs (bar work or waiting etc) just how many more hours per week he'd need to work to pay for food and rent and travel to auditions, than if he got himself a trade or qualification (be that a plumber or as a Nurse working bank hours or a hairdresser or swimming teacher or whatever). It began to make economic sense, without me every needing to say "Don't be ridiculous" at any point.

Thank you all. Some good ideas.

@paralysedbyinertia
13,14.
I hope they will grow out of it.

Most successful people have an incredible work ethic regardless of education, pop stars, influencers, models, footballers - all train and practise an immense amount... I think it’s good to explain that to younger people and perhaps if they want to be influencers - look at their favourites with them; how frequently they’re posting - (most post regularly daily or weekly) and ask what they’re doing to already to improve their profile, what editing and grading equipment they have, what ideas they have for it - sport, lifestyle, cooking, etc etc ...

It’s not about encouragement ( tho that part is nice / builds bonds etc ... ) but also gets them thinking what’s involved at this stage and starting to realise that even in the most fun looking jobs, effort and determination is involved. Good luck x

Also - if they are young - think it’s really common to want that career at 12 / 13 but they grow out of it -but the message of effort and determination needed for even the most “glamorous” jobs is still an important one I think!

If you don't let them follow their dreams at 15/16 when can they?

DD was dead set on the RADA/Conservatoire route. TBF she is very very good and got a distinction for Grade 8 voice. Therefore we supported her decision and agreed to support her funding wise providing she did a nursing/teaching qualification as well so could always get work.

A few weeks before the UCAS forms went in she changed her mind and is now at a major university studying for a traditionally academic degree.

Mine are 20 now so not teens anymore and they weren't like this at school. I think it helped that they both had part time jobs in a cafe earning £4.20 an hour ... helps to ground them!

A friend with younger teens is going through this though .... her son believes his first car will be a Tesla . Funnily enough the same cafe that mine worked in is advertising for a saturday job ... he told his mum he wouldn't even get out of bed for £4.20 an hour , or whatever it is these days.

It's very normal for young people to through that 'fantasy' stage.
A couple of things you could do:

Be supportive but try the help them understand the reality of getting into this career. Ask them to start putting together an action plan for their career journey which they need to research - quite often this dose of reality will make them understand how difficult it can be but also they're developing career management skills.

While being supportive also suggest the concept of a back up plan. 'What will you do if this doesn't work out?'

Hopefully they'll see a careers adviser at some point soon who will help inject some realism!

Also, young people have to stay in education or training until 18 so they will have to choose an appropriate route after school!

No reason they can’t do it now? Tell them to get on with it. Their failure will do the best job of making them see sense.

I train careers advisers and another technique you can use is something called curious questioning

Things like:
Oh that really interesting tell me how do you think you get in to that job?
What do you think you need to do to be successful?
How will you do that?
What would a day in this job look like?
How will you stand out?
How will you cope with the negative aspects?
What do you think the negative aspects are?

Getting them to think about the specifics of the job can challenge unrealistic expectations.

Sounds completely normal :o

My 12yo wants to leave school, go to live in Japan for a year to see if he likes it and then maybe get a job there :o

However since I went abroad by teaching English we are looking into that as an option together, but I've explained due to visa requirements he'll need to do uni here first. And that if he wants to work in technology in Japan he'll need to work really hard and study certain subjects.

Why don't you try humouring them? Just saying no that's unrealistic,you need to get a proper job is much like parents have said for decades to devastated teens thinking their parents don't understand them, but what about looking together at successful influencers or social media personalities and what they have done in order to be successful? There is a lot of hard work and transferable skills there. There are subjects they could study at school or college - drama and music (performance), hair /fashion /beauty /make up, video editing, photography. When they see you're taking their dream seriously (even though in reality you also need a huge amount of luck!) they might be more open to other suggestions like having study options as a back up.

But really it's not the end of the world if they end up taking a levels or starting uni a couple of years late because they've realised social media is not for them after all.

This also gives you the chance to help steer them a bit and make sure they don't get scammed (there are a lot of "do this to get more followers, do that to get free products you can show on your blog") or get drawn into seedier avenues like Only Fans. (Don't Google that if you're at work!) If they don't think you approve of the social media "dream" in the first place, then they're going to assume any reservations you have about things are due to that disapproval, or they're going to be navigating this stuff by themselves naively with no concept of what kind of people are out there or the potential consequences of dealing with them.

Ds1 is now 18 and no he never had the pipe dream job in mind of being an influencer. He did however have several mates at secondary school who would upload videos of themselves playing computer games with their high pitched voice commentary with their 20 views per video. They usually had about 8 subscribers again all mates.

This has clearly all died off but they did try. They had that dream and spent time playing and uploading the video.

I think the reality is you need to tell them that they will pay tax and national insurance on any earnings they do make. That brings that £100k right down by a third. They may well need to pay an accountant too.

Also influencers do spend a lot of time creating content, editing, uploading etc. But I agree that saying if you think that is what you want to do then do it but you will need a back up plan which involves working at your education. Nothing lasts forever and you need to know that you have other options should this not be what you want to do in the future.

It's not uncommon to say that at age 12/13.

An interesting experiment is to get them to create a video (no faces) and see how many views they can get. My sons made a quick video of an Easter egg in a game (like a secret area) and it managed about 23 views including me watching it a few times to make them feel better.

Iirc a 10 minute video on YouTube with 1 million views and 2 ads makes about $3000? That's a long way to 100k.

Do your kids have patience for video editing? I would happily encourage that kind of skill and get them to practice using family home videos

TBF, I do say 'that sounds amazing, how are you going to get started?' quite a lot, but then I got pretty far down the line with acting before giving up at 28. Funny to hear acting put in the same bracket by posters and actually food for thought there.

I don't really understand why you think they'd be realistic about anything? They're barely out of childhood.

They haven't worked, don't know what things cost - of course they think mad things about life and how it's going to go!

It is fine for young people to be interested in competitive careers - some do succeed after all!
But it's about realism - it's very rare for people to to have long term success without working very hard for it. That's the key message to get across because at least they are developing skills and experience along the way which are transferable.

Totally normal.
That or play football for Man United.

I think the key is not to value judgement them (oh that is not a real job/crap career etc)
But rather to support and challenge.
So we have conversations around how many influencers actually make a living doing it in the UK, and how hard it is to get in to. What sort of skills would they need? What could they do to develop those skills?
Also, hav eyou seen any influencers over the age of 30? So what do they do then?
And alongside that talk about a back up plan, and something to fall back on, and how school is about the back up plan, keeping as many options open as you can and so on.

I use the footballers as an example. There are about as many successful influencers as premier league footballers, so we talk about the number of 13 year olds who love football, how many of those play for a team, how many teams are successful, how many get picked for academies, how many of those go on to be picked for teams and then how many of those make their way up the ladder to top footballer status.

Reality does tend to kick in around 15/16!

Sounds totally normal to me. Same as with some sports, or music, or other dreams. I just wish there were less tv so-called talent shows and other things that fuel this.