A recent study found that 75% of kids ages 6–17 aspire to be digital content creators when they grow up. 1 in 3 want to be YouTubers, 1 in 5 bloggers, and 1 in 6 would like to be a pop or movie star.
To be honest, my first reaction to this stat is apprehension. I’m a huge proponent of the arts — I devote most of my working hours to the user experience of a software product enabling musicians. Yet, I fear the innate human desire for and appreciation of creative expression has been hijacked by a cocktail of capitalism + addictive tech products.
I fear we’ve enticed a generation to swallow this elixir of ‘creativity.’ And while these tools have absolutely exploded the possibilities of who has access to and can create art in an amazing way, I don’t think they are the silver bullet for the creative economy.
The fundamental tension here is Content != Art. That which garners views is not the same as that which inspires artistic honesty.
In Day 6s essay I talked about empowering people to go beyond their humdrum jobs in the face of automation.
But the empowerment I want to unleash on the world is the freedom for everyone to be able to treat their life like the beautiful creative process that it is. Instead of plugging into jobs to pay for a mythical lifestyle sold to us by the very same content creators.
Hopefully that creative process leads to many great works of art — digital or otherwise (yes, even TikToks). But more than anything, I hope people find that which inspires them to create every day — be it gadgets, or gardens, or graduate degrees.
