Rayn Asaria posts videos of his political newscasts, interviews with members of parliament and videos for a charity he supports for his more than 850 followers on Instagram.
Rayn says he is a social media and business entrepreneur. He is also ten years old.
“When I was seven or eight years old, I was doing news updates,” he says. “I was talking about all of these things that are so interesting about politics… that’s why I go through social media.”
Rayn joins a growing number of young people who see social media as a career choice and way to develop essential skills for their future. Only seven per cent of children in a 2019 Lego survey said they wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. But about 30 per cent said they wanted to be a “YouTuber.”
Like their Gen-Alpha counterparts (born between 2010 and 2025), Gen-Z (born in the 1990s and early 2000s) also sees social media as a viable career option. Asked about their plans after finishing school, 27 per cent of Gen Z Americans aged 16 to 25 said they planned to become social media influencers, according to a 2022 Higher Visibility survey.
“The role of children and youth in society has increased over the last decades, so they are getting heard more. And they want to be heard more,” says Olaf Kraus de Camargo, co-director at CanChild, a research and educational centre focused on youth with disabilities at McMaster University.
Cashing in
“Rayn had many challenges in life,” says Rayn’s father, Jamil Asaria, a plastic surgeon in Toronto.
Due to a health condition that delayed his physical development, Rayn never played sports. Instead, he spent much of his life on the sidelines, talking with adults or spending time on computers.
When he went with his dad to vote in 2019, Rayn’s love of politics was sparked by seeing all the election coverage. He started writing to politicians and has interviewed the likes of Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri and former cabinet minister and Conservative leadership contender Peter MacKay.
Rayn does not profit from his videos, but many social media influencers do. Earnings vary by social media platform and the popularity of the creator and their content.
On Instagram, the bulk of an influencer’s profit comes from sponsored content, where companies pay to feature products on a creator’s channel. Influencers with between 1,000 and 10,000 followers can earn up to $100 for each sponsored post, according to the Blogging Wizard. Accounts with 10,000 to 50,000 followers may go as high as $500 per post.
On YouTube, influencers who have achieved at least 4,000 hours of “watch time” and 1,000 subscribers can join the YouTube Partner Program. Earnings vary based on viewership, the length of the video and how many ads display during a video, with YouTubers earning somewhere between $1 and $30 per 1,000 views.
On TikTok, creators get paid through the TikTok Creator Fund. Creators estimate the platform pays between 2 and 4 cents for every 1,000 views, according to a 2022 Hootsuite Strategy blog.
Parents wary
Many parents are wary of allowing their children onto social media platforms, partly because the parents themselves are not participating on them.
Rayn, whose parents use social media for limited personal and business purposes, took the initiative in starting his own accounts. He would ask his dad to film him so he could post videos on social media. In 2021, he was invited to go on Breakfast Television.
“He did it independently that day,” says Jamil, who says he was nervous about his son going on TV. “He was seven.”
But from then on, Jamil decided to embrace his son’s hobby.
“Let’s work on this together. You love it. You’re good at it,” says Jamil about Rayn.
Dana Leon, a children’s social media educator on Outschool, an online educational hub, says fostering children’s interest in social media can help them prepare for the jobs of the future.
“When we think about going into the future, this is another type of literacy that everybody’s going to need,” says Leon. “If we keep them away from the tools, it will be more difficult for them to adapt.”
Leon, a special education teacher, uses her social media classes to teach writing and reading skills to kids. She says learning how to effectively tell a story on social media can be a valuable job skill.
Storytelling can also help people develop a professional brand.
“We have things like LinkedIn, where people get noticed because they know how to tell a story about themselves,” says Leon.
One afternoon when teaching her two nieces to make a social media video, she noticed another added benefit: filming and editing a video gets kids off watching other peoples’ content.
“It’s stopping them from scrolling,” says Leon. “[Instead], they’re creating.”
Social media influencers
Jamil checks messages coming into Rayn’s social media accounts and deletes or responds to inappropriate messages. At first, Rayn was resistant to his dad’s meddling, but Jamil fostered a collaborative approach.
“Now he understands why because he’s older,” says Jamil. “He’s very much involved in the process of safety and privacy because it’s not just like, ‘don’t look at this’ or ‘don’t open this’ or ‘don’t go here’… It’s about why not to go there.”
Camargo agrees it’s important for families to establish a media plan together that outlines how to deal with online threats. He also says parents need to openly discuss with their kids the detrimental effects of social media and how to avoid them.
“The principle is that the use of media — [be] that screen time or social media — is something that the whole family needs to learn,” says Camargo, who is also associate professor in the department of pediatrics at McMaster University.
Parents can teach the “need to balance the amount of time that you spend on media with the time that you need for other things that are important in life, like staying healthy, eating, running, exercising, all these things.”
Unchecked social media time can lead to addictive behaviours, a topic Canadian Affairs has covered. Social media and gaming rehabilitation clinics are starting to emerge in Canada to help children and teens manage these addictions.
But for Rayn, social media is “fun.”
“This is easy for Rayn,” says Jamil. “He loves it and he was so motivated. It’s just his nature. And I’m a big believer in [fostering] people’s natural abilities.”
“We all have different abilities and… [it’s important to] get through the things that are challenges and really push [for] the things you’re good at.”
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