It will only accelerate from here.
It would suprise me if one person in my 30k pop county lives of "social media". And I don't put the bar that high. Like atleast McDonalds pay.
Maybe one in 100 000 does? Concentrated to big cities. I have never seen any stats on this. Some quick searching just gave Forbes and other probably made up numbers.
They'll probably grow out of it. Half my high school class thought they were going to be major league baseball players or NFL players when they grew up. Now they're accountants and HVAC installers.
Social media has no such limitations. Certain segments favor the young but there are plenty of middle aged and a few older Youtubers making bank. I could certainly see some people holding onto the dream for far too long hoping for a break. A very few might even get it.
The mentality that you mention, which really only applies to some small number of people, won't survive (1) a prolonged economic downturn that dries up ad revenue breaks the ad-supported business model, (2) a large war that summons young people away from their homes or impacts infrastructure, (3) a strong economic upswing that open promising new opportunities, (4) a legislative change in the accessibility of social media, etc.
At least some of those things that dramatically disrupt the current social media landscape will happen. It's just not that durable in its current form, and we already see that in its changing landscape, with more of the gardens becoming walled to keep balance sheets stable, more of the previously-leading service bleeding off users, more self-regulation actions meant to outmaneuver legislative hearings and lawsuits, etc
People can have social media as their "core identity" all they'd like, but they'll eventually discover that everyone's life ultimately involves a bunch of chapters where your "core identity" looks real darn different. Most don't get to keep a "core identity" just because it happens to be the one they adopted in their teens or twenties. In fact, most learn that they wouldn't even have wanted to anyway.
If it was conceivable to raise in the ranks and get good compensation and respect by hard and diligent work, young people would be very interested. But that's not been the case for a long time. Young people will always flock to where they can succeed on their own merits, wether that was being a soldier, sailing in the merchant fleet, digging for gold, acting, business, technology, etc.
If healthcare isn't their interest, Biglaw starting salaries for first year associates are $225k and go up rapidly. Other areas of law draw salaries from $150k to millions.
Obviously tech compensation is discussed here frequently, with high salaries possible for dev work as well as design, management, sales, support.
Finance and business consulting still pull in massive classes of entry level employees every year, with high starting salaries and higher comp for those who stay.
Fossil fuel extraction is full of high paid jobs, whether engineers and scientists designing equipment or field workers getting their hands dirty.
Social media is a tiny, tiny opportunity compared to other parts of the economy. For every influencer making $100k, there will be tens of thousands of people making six figures in a different domain.
Biglaw and finance consulting I doubt is open for everybody to work in, unless your parents paid for a prestigious college. The door is pretty well welded shut, as far as I know. Social media is on the other hand free to start building your audience.
Tech is the outlier, I agree with you on that one. If you have the talent you can make it in tech still as a young person only on talent and hard work.
Social media is such a tiny opportunity monetarily that it doesn't even count. It's not the money making young people flock to social media – because there is almost no money there – it is the chance of being somebody, having people listening to you and getting some respect as a person. Rather than being treated as a piece of shit by your boss for no reason.
Not in the US, but the (hard working) engineers and dentists that I personally know all needed financial help from parents to be able to afford their very humble dwellings. Every financially successful person I know either inherited real estate or bought real estate before most of humans were born. Some of them also work hard, but that doesn't influence their financials much.
I'd like to ask what is the average pay for a non-working homeowner in California? How much can they expect to earn tax free per year from their real estate increasing in value, as compared to the hard working and highly taxed nurse earning from labour?
It's absurd to claim that working or having a career delivers no monetary benefits.
Just compare the level of taxation on labour with the taxes on real estate or imports/exports.