The idea of growing up online is something that I have wanted to discuss on a blog post for a long while now, I often find myself thinking about where my life would be and what I would be like had I not spend such a vast majority of my time immersed in the digital world. Back in 2012 I made my first Twitter account at the age of twelve, now at the age of eighteen it is safe to say that I have spent a vast majority of my teenage years growing up and sharing parts of myself online. Not only have I changed immensely as a person since making that very first account, the internet community has changed immense amounts too.
After a few months of joining Twitter I came across the YouTube community and the concept of ‘YouTubers’. This was a world that, in the end, would be something that took up a vast quantity of my teenage years. I remember the first video that I watched was by Bertie Gilbert back in December 2011 which lead me to enter the world of fangirls, internet friends, and binge watching YouTube videos instead of doing my school work most nights.
It was a strange conversation to have with my parents to begin to explain that I watched people that put videos of themselves on the internet, let alone to suggest that I wanted to go to meet ups to gain the opportunity to meet these people that I ever-so-longingly looked up to. They’d always seen the internet as a dangerous place filled with people who disguise their real identity and intentions with you. For them to understand that these people were ‘real people’ was something that they still kind of struggle with now, they are still weary when I say I am going to meet my internet friends even now. It wasn’t until I attended Summer in the City in 2014 that they began to understand the idea of YouTube (especially because this was when the site was probably the most successful and the community was thriving the most). They began to accept that the people who created videos had viewers and both creators and viewers alike just wanted the opportunity to meet each other and generally be in an environment with a variety of likeminded creatives.
Three years after my first ever YouTube event I have attended two more Summer in the City’s alongside book signings and other events like the much more chilled out park gatherings. I have seen YouTube become a lot more commercialised than it ever was before, algorithms and sponsorship deals are what the site and its creators thrive off and watching this change was somewhat strange for me. Not only have I see how YouTube as a platform has changed but also the rise and fall of certain creators fame, proving YouTube and social media to be an immensely powerful stepping stone for hundreds of creatives who have used it as a way of reaching their further dreams away from the platform. Take Troye Sivan and Patty Walters for example, their massive following allowed them to have a much smoother transition into being successful recording artists in their genres than they perhaps would have otherwise had.
Watching all of this happen was bound to leave me inspired to create, giving me the sense of almost giving back to the online community that I had been a part of for so many years, which is why three years ago I made my first blog. Even looking back on this blog now I can see the biggest change in my personality and who I am, but one thing has stayed the same and that is my passion to create. Creating a blog and becoming a ‘creative’ was something that was always going to happen in my eyes, having such an easy access to platforms that allowed me to share my work was a godsend in all honesty. Writing will always be what I am most passionate about, making this first blog was my first sense of being a ‘creator’ rather than a ‘viewer’ of the content.
Currently, I am in the weird limbo of creator/viewer where as much as I am creating me own content on a regular basis I am also consuming content from people that I have looked up to for years (Dottie James, Dodie Clark and Lucy Moon to list a few). I think this is why for me this years SitC was so strange, because I would go up to my favourite creators as a creator and hold an intellectual conversation about creating, in the most part these were conversations about my writing and their writing too. It was strange to see the change in the creators attitudes towards me as they realised that I was serious about creating and working hard, that I wasn’t just some fangirl that had come to cry to them.
The hardest thing is that when you grow up online parts of you are always out there for people to find, if people looked hard enough they could find tweets from when I was twelve and a lot less educated on topics than I am now. You are definitely held much more accountable for your mistakes which are made while young on social media, people are constantly bringing up ‘receipts’ from bigger creators less educated days. It is important to remember that people are allowed to change and develop as people, that they are not going to be the same as they were and this is going to make their content change (Savannah Brown and Bertie Gilbert are key examples of this).
I’m sorry if this post was a bit jumbled up and didn’t make much sense, I tried to make it as coherent as possible bit sometimes my thoughts get a bit messed up when they come onto the page. If you have any thoughts about what I’ve mentioned about growing up online or want to share your own experiences of growing up online with me then be sure to leave a comment or drop me a tweet! I would love to hear your input on this xo
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