Youtube's Influence

Youtube is a social network created in 2005, and, lately, it gained great popularity. The site offers not only entertainment, but information, job opportunities, and all major attractions for young people. It presents a variety of profiles and content for all that you can seek, like comedy, art, math, music and more, including the existence of influential personalities. Youtube also provides a way for people to easily express and share their opinions and lives through videos that quickly spread on the social network.

Influential people, commonly known as Youtubers, are role models for a considerable fraction of teens. They are examples of attitude and success, as they have exposed their lives and ideas to thousands of people, they have been criticized, but continued to do what they enjoy doing. As a result of admiration, Youtubers' interests become their fans' too. It is common to see a comment that says "Zoella [a youtuber] sent me here", for example. This shows that people are interested in involving themselves with their role model's passions, the things that made who they admire become the person they know today, understanding them a little bit more. Another example of teen's fondness toward these professionals is start a YouTube career themselves, inspired by their favourite YouTubers.

It is possible to see YouTube's influence even in humor, as the so-called "viral videos", or videos that were watched by a massive amount of people, are mostly comedy or show funny situations, like an odd dog's sneeze. Those videos are frequently used in jokes or are referred to in online culture. A lot of those are controversial videos and cause a commotion in society , such as the one of a YouTuber cutting his a hundred thousand subscribers plaque. 

To the right: famous dog's sneeze

Another group YouTube has influenced was musicians. YouTube became the website where most of music videos are published, and are exposed to the public. In this case, this does not only affect us, teenagers, but (almost) the whole world, as this social network is an easy way to keep track of the bands/singers you most like, or to discover new ones.

On the whole, Youtube has proven to have a major role in society nowadays. It is now a place of easy access to diverse information and contact other people all around the world, a social network that provides fame and influence, humor and polemic, examples and culture. For teens, the age group that uses it most frequently and is more influenced by it, the social network represents an accessible chance of expressing ideas, and becoming famous by being yourself.