Desire to create personal online content rapidly drops among older age groups in survey.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That’s one of the questions educational publisher Gakken asks Japanese kids in its annual survey about their hopes and ambitions for their futures, and when it comes to jobs they want to do as grown-ups, researchers say this year’s top answer from elementary school-age kids was “online streamer.”

That result was obtained from polling 1,200 elementary school kids, 600 boys and 600 girls, who were allowed to give up to two answers for the question about their hoped-for line of work. Kids saying they wanted to become YouTubers or Instagrammers also had their responses included in the total for “online streamer,” so “personal online content creator” might be the more accurate description, but regardless of the format and whether it’s streamed live or not, such responses passed up the number-one choice from last year’s survey, pattisier/pastry maker, which slipped to number two.

● What job do you want when you grow up? (elementary school students)
1. Online streamer (113 responses)
2. Pattisier (110 responses)
3. Police officer (92 responses)
4. Schoolteacher (87 responses)
5. Doctor/dentist (69 responses)

Though online streamer was the top response from boys, it also ranked eight among girls, who gave it 37 votes. Pattisier was the number-one answer from girls, and by a wide margin, with 104 votes, 43 more than girls’ number-two response, schoolteacher.

However, when 600 middle school students were asked the same question, online streamer slipped down into a three-way tie for fourth place, behind “company employee” and “civil servant.”

● What job do you want when you grow up? (middle school students)
1. Company employee (75 responses)
2. Civil servant (54 responses)
3. Schoolteacher (49 responses)
4 (tie). Engineer/programmer (36 responses)
4 (tie). Online streamer (36 responses)
4 (tie). Doctor/dentist (36 responses)

“Company employee,” generally used in Japan to refer to white-collar business/office jobs, was the top pick from boys and the fifth most-common response from girls. “Civil servant,” usually indicating work in government administrative offices or agencies, was tied for second among boys and sixth for girls, with patissier, schoolteacher, and nurse finishing in a three-way tie atop the girls’ list.

The trend away from personal online content creation continued when 600 high school students were polled, with online streamer finishing out of the top 10 responses not only for high schoolers as a whole, but also out of the top 10 for high school boys and girls both.

● What job do you want when you grow up? (high school students)
1. Company employee (74 responses)
2. Civil servant (52 responses)
3. Schoolteacher (47 responses)
4. Nurse (35 responses)
5. Engineer/programmer (27 responses)

Company employee was the top answer from both male and female high school students, with an almost-even 38/36 split in responses, with civil servant second for boys and fifth for girls, and nurse the number-two pick from girls.

The bleak way of interpreting the data would be to lament how the allure of creative endeavors apparently fades as Japanese children get older, with traditional money-making means becoming more attractive instead. However, with personal responsibility being something that Japanese culture places great importance on, being able to earn a living and support yourself without becoming a burden to others is always going to be seen as admirable, and as children mature and start needing to align themselves educationally for the careers they want to start in the near future, it makes sense that conventional, stable sources of income would start rising in the rankings.

There’s also the likelihood that online streamer slipping down in the rankings among older kids isn’t because they’re reluctantly giving up on their dreams, but because as they become older and more media savvy, their perception of being a professional content creator shifts. Most streamers, YouTubers, and Instagrammers cover hobby-related topics that they, ostensibly, enjoy, so to the eyes of younger kids being a content creator can look like a situation of getting paid to play and have fun. In reality, though, professional streaming often requires focusing on the audience’s interests instead of your own, as well as presenting a persona crafted to catch a wide viewership, and aside from the top earners, most streamers don’t make enough money to support themselves without also having some sort of income from a more conventional job.

As older children become better able to see those less enjoyable/glamorous aspects of streaming, it stands to reason that many of them will also come to feel that the job as a whole, with all it entails, no longer feels as appealing to them. In that sense, it’s similar to how being a pro athlete or actor is a dream of many young kids who like sports or movies, but once they dip their toes in those worlds and see how much practice and effort goes into athletics and acting even at the amateur level, realize they won’t provide the sort of lifestyle balance they want if they pursue them as careers. So along those same lines, online streamer seems to be another job that sounds cool to kids who haven’t yet fully considered all aspects of it, and while some of them will be willing to take on both the good and the bad of the job, others, perhaps very wisely, will realize that they’d rather do something else.

Source: Gakken (1, 2, 3) via The Sankei Shimbun via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2, 3)
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