The Fall of the Full-Time Content Creator

Is content creation going back to being a side hustle?

Only 5% of Gen Zers aspire to be digital creators or influencers, according to May data from Yahoo and YouGov. That’s a stark contrast to a 2023 Morning Consult study, which found 57% of Gen Zers wanted to be creators.

Gen Z could simply be growing up and realizing that being a creator is much harder than it looks, as we discussed on last week’s podcast. 

For one, money is consolidating at the top. The leading 10% of creators accounted for 62% of brand payment volume in 2025, according to a January report from CreatorIQ, which analyzed payments on its platform. That means 90% of creators were left fighting for less than 40% of brand sponsorship dollars, the primary revenue stream for most creators.

Similar dynamics also exist with other income sources, including ad revenue sharing. (See creator monetization section below.)

As content creation has become a viable career path, the industry is also now more crowded than ever. There are more than 1.5 million full-time equivalent creators in the US, according to the IAB. That’s more than the number of active doctors and lawyers, based on the latest available data.

Then there’s the burnout and public pressure. It’s not easy to be constantly posting content, as AI-focused creator Catherine Goetze, known to her 833,000 Instagram followers as CatGPT, explained in a recent video. Plus, as the profiles and businesses of top creators have grown, so have the scrutiny and tensions. In the past few months, top names from MrBeast to Alex Cooper and Steven Bartlett have faced public criticism, lawsuits or senior staff exits.

But there’s likely more to Gen Z’s apparent change of heart than just that. We’re now (re)entering an era where more people are creating content on the side, rather than making content creation their primary career. That includes everyone from doctors and lawyers to venture capitalists—and even Starbucks baristas.

Nearly three-quarters (71%) of monetizing creators in the US also have outside employment, according to a November 2025 report from the Consumer Technology Association. Meanwhile, only 38% of content creators in a new CreatorIQ survey said content creation was their primary source of income. Taken together, that suggests content tends to be a part-time job.

That’s not to say some people won’t still take the leap into full-time content creation, especially when these side gigs start making them more money than their regular jobs.

But keeping a day job while creating content has a lot of benefits. Creators get the security of being part of a larger organization, including paid time off, healthcare and legal support, while earning extra cash on the side. (Though it can certainly be exhausting to balance both!)

What’s interesting now is that some of these regular jobs may look somewhat different than in the past. As top creators have built established businesses, often with multiple lines of revenue, many of them are also hiring teams, including seasoned executives and entry-level positions. MrBeast, for example, is currently looking for a social media coordinator as he also reportedly searches for a CMO.

While this might seem like a big reversal for the industry, we see it more as a market correction from the narrative that it’s easy for anyone to make it big as a creator. It’s also a more realistic and sustainable way for the creator economy to grow.

To put it another way: In the CTA study, creators made an average of $10,332 per year from content creation, including both part-time and full-time work. 

While that’s not enough to make a living, it’s a pretty nice sum for a side gig.

• The bar just got a lot higher for creators to make money on YouTube. Starting in February, new creators will need 8,000 qualified watch hours in the last year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program. That’s double the current requirements. The changes won’t affect creators who are already in the program.

YouTube is also making it more difficult for existing Shorts creators to keep earning. They’ll need at least 10 million Shorts views every 90 days or their revenue will pause until they reach those views again.

YouTube says the changes are to “keep pace with the growth of YouTube.” Between the lines, YouTube is also likely concerned that its revenue growth can’t keep pace with the growth in eligible channels. Either way, as we noted above, the end result is that smaller creators will find it harder than ever to make money.

• X is also changing how it pays creators. The platform will end revenue sharing and replace it with a new program that rewards original content. To qualify, creators need to have a Premium account, 500 verified followers and at least 500,000 impressions on the Home timeline from verified users over the past 90 days.

The definition for original content is broad. The company says it can include a written thread, an original meme, a news story the person broke or commentary “that adds a unique perspective to the conversation.” 

It’s the latest in a long string of attempts by X, and Twitter before it, to figure out a way to effectively pay creators on the platform. With this new program, X is also clearly trying to boost its own subscription business, Premium.

This is part of Zuckerberg’s 6,500-word manifesto published on Monday, laying out his vision for the future of AI.  

The essay comes as consumer backlash toward AI keeps building, from complaints over data centers invading people’s backyards to broader environmental concerns. But Meta, which says it could spend up to $145 billion on AI this year, has been doubling down on the positive spin. Instagram Adam Mosseri also recently posted a slickly produced video hyping up AI, which was met with a deluge of negative comments from users.

We recently spoke with Alex Schultz, Meta’s chief data officer and former CMO, about the company’s efforts to improve the perception of AI among regular people. Hint: It includes a lot of local marketing in places affected by data centers.

You can watch the full interview with Schultz on YouTube or tune in on Spotify, Apple or other podcasting platforms.

• A New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from Instagram and Facebook as part of the second phase of a landmark trial. That’s on top of $375 million in civil penalties against Meta by jurors earlier this year. For context, Meta made nearly $61 billion in revenue in just the second quarter of 2026.

• Thousands of social media addiction lawsuits against Meta, Google, TikTok and other apps can move forward, a US Appeals Court said on Monday. The companies have been trying to get the cases dropped. As we’ve previously reported, social media giants continue to face mounting legal pressure over how their apps affect young users.

“We are ready to hold Meta accountable for its role in fueling the mental health crisis of American children and look forward to trial. It seems Meta very much does not,” wrote Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California.

We interviewed Bonta earlier this year about regulating social media giants, his own creator strategy and why AI “isn’t the bad guy.” Watch the full interview below or tune in on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your shows. 

California may fine creators and political campaigns if they fail to disclose paid political posts, the Los Angeles Times reported. The fines could be up to $5,000 per violation and could disproportionately affect smaller creators, who are expected to play a bigger role in upcoming elections. California and Texas are the only states that have passed policies requiring disclosure for paid political posts.

Naomi Seibt, a far-right influencer in Germany, applied for funding from the US State Department to launch a media network for political content, Reuters reported. A decision on her application is pending. Last year, she also applied for US political asylum claiming political persecution in Germany.

• César Gastélum, a creator in Mexico, was shot dead last week while livestreaming on TikTok near a fast-food restaurant. It’s the second example of violence on TikTok Live within the same week following celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton appearing to harm himself live. 

Livestreaming is having a renaissance this year, helping creators stand out from algorithmically-driven feeds and build loyal audiences. But these tragic incidents underscore the format’s unpredictability and propensity for misuse. Many creators and big advertisers have already steered clear of livestreaming due to concerns about brand safety and lack of control. These latest examples are only likely to reinforce that caution.

• The defense team of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother on trial for murdering her three kids, is moving to add Emily Thorndike—who worked at the psychiatric hospital that treated Clancy and went viral on TikTok for criticizing the facility—to the witness list, the Boston Herald reported. 

The judge has not yet ruled on whether she’ll be able to testify, but the case has already generated significant attention on social media, including true crime creators sharing plenty of conspiracy theories.

Disney+ and Hulu are going deeper into video podcasting with a new iHeartMedia deal for six shows, ‌including “Hey Jonas!” hosted by Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas. 

Its other shows are a way to promote—and pull viewers back—into Disney’s library of content. Take “Desperately Devoted,” a rewatch podcast for “Desperate Housewives,” which is co-hosted by one of the show’s stars Teri Hatcher. The company is taking a similar approach with its short-form video feed Verts, which launched with clips from Disney shows that viewers can save or start streaming.

Spotify named “Two Hot Takes” host Morgan Absher as the first podcast ambassador for its Equal program, which is now expanding beyond supporting female musicians, songwriters and producers to include podcasters.

That’s how much a nationwide school cell phone ban in the US could cost TikTok in ad revenue, according to new estimates from Emarketer. The forecast gives us some insight into how important teens and young people are financially to social platforms as social media bans ramp up worldwide.

As teens will presumably spend less time on social apps due to a cell phone ban, the research firm expects marketers will allocate fewer ad dollars to platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Meta’s Instagram. Meta’s revenue would see the least impact due to its scale. 

But $1 billion isn’t enough for executives to lose a lot of sleep over. It represents roughly 5.7% of the $17.5 billion Emarketer expects TikTok to generate in US ad revenue this year. It’s a drop in the bucket for a company like Meta, which generated roughly $1 billion every two days last year.

And this is highly speculative. The forecast suggests that teens might also limit their overall social media usage as a result of such a ban, including outside of school. That’s unlikely to happen at scale, unless they are forced to do so by lawmakers. Enforcement of these types of rules is also tough. Just take the UK’s proposed social media curfew, which was highly criticized as users can easily turn the feature off.

Plus, teens are notorious for finding workarounds: Remember when they were using Google Docs to pass notes in class? Meanwhile, 36 states already limit or ban cell phone usage in schools, according to Ballotpedia, and that hasn’t caused any meaningful impact on ad revenue. 

Still, if marketers do reduce their spending on social media as a result of a ban, we’re most interested in where the $1 billion will go. Google Docs doesn’t have ads, but presumably whatever apps teens turn to instead of social media could see a boost.

Christine Cassis joined Twitch as the new CMO. Most recently, she was director of marketing, brand and social for Shopify. 

Night, a talent management firm, launched a new executive recruiting business called Night Search led by Kim Tuttle and Kelly Gordon. Night, which helped build brands like MrBeast’s Feastables, wrote it believes the operators working with creators are critical to the businesses’ success.

The move comes as more creators are building out their C-Suites, but also as other creators, including Steven Bartlett, Mythical and Alex Cooper, have faced senior staff exits at their companies. 

Yosef Johnson is now leading Dick Clark Productions’ DCP Studios, a new division focused on expanding its creative and production capabilities for awards shows including the Golden Globes. Previously, Johnson was senior vice president and head of Vox Media’s branded content unit Vox Creative. Vox Media and DCP are both owned by Penske Media Corporation. 

Jenny Tartikoff was named senior vice president and head of communications at SiriusXM. Previously, she was executive vice president of global communications at Paramount Pictures.

Studios Want Creators. Do Creators Want Them?

TikTok Star Sydney Towle Challenged Assumptions About How Cancer Patients Should Live

Barack Obama Is A Podcaster Now 

Snapchat Users Bristle at Cost to Save Their Memories