A 2023 poll of 16–25-year-olds in the UK by Savanta found that 37 per cent would like to become a content creator one day, while 13 per cent already consider themselves one. Even young people who aren’t dreaming of monetising their social media profiles can get drawn into it, as Christina Dean found out when her teen daughter was approached by brands on TikTok.
Christina, 48, who lives in London, didn’t find out she’d been messaged by brands until parcels of clothes started arriving at the house. “The first time she was approached was by a company I did not like at all. I was really surprised by how unprofessionally it was managed. She was just 15. I was outraged that no approach was given to me as the legal guardian,” she says.
Christina was aware that her daughter was using TikTok, often to post get-ready-with-me content and dances with her friends, but she didn’t realise the level of attention she was attracting. Then one day she asked where the parcels were coming from. Christina says she was immediately “suspicious and curious”.
She began following her daughter’s TikTok account, discovering that some of her videos had over three million views. “It was quite a shock, and I experienced a mixture of fear and trepidation,” Christina says.
