Insights

Everyone Wants to Be a Creator. Who Is Going to Fix the Wiring?

By The Wider Lens Desk

An electrician working on electrical wiring while a young woman records a social media reel in a workshop.
Illustration generated with AI.

Social media makes attention look like achievement. But a society still needs people who can build, repair, teach and solve problems.

Try a small experiment tonight. Scroll your feed for ten minutes and count two things: the videos that entertain you, and the videos that teach you something useful—how to repair a wire, understand a building plan or grasp a difficult idea in sixty seconds.

Neither count is wrong. Entertainment is a legitimate part of life, and many creators work hard for what they earn. But the balance may tell you something about what your feed makes visible.

One of our writers, who spent years living in two Gulf countries, noticed a similar pattern while looking at the feeds of around 100 people and observing the formats that repeatedly appeared in viral videos. In the feeds examined, entertainment was more visible than practical knowledge and professional expertise. This was an informal observation of the content that appeared in those feeds, not a scientific count or a representative survey.

It cannot tell us what every young person watches or wants to become. But it raises a question worth asking: when attention becomes the most visible measure of success, what happens to the skills that keep society running?

Being seen is not the same as being skilled       

Social media has opened real doors. A comedian can find an audience without a television network, a small business can reach customers without a large advertising budget, and a teacher can reach students far beyond one classroom. Making content is not a lesser career simply because it happens on a screen.

But getting attention and developing a skill are different achievements. Social media has changed career expectations, making online visibility look like a promising path to success. A creator may attract viewers through humour, personality or controversy. An electrician or architect may spend years learning before others can safely rely on their work.

These paths are not opposites, and many creators are highly skilled. But being seen is not the same as being skilled.

The concern is not that entertainment has no value. It is that visibility can make one kind of success appear more common, more accessible and more desirable than it really is.

The feed shows the winners. It rarely shows the full competition.

The creator dream and the income gap

The appeal is easy to understand. Jobs are scarce in many economies, degrees do not always lead to employment, and a phone with an internet connection can be enough to start creating content.

But a low barrier to entry does not guarantee a high chance of success.

In a 2024 Adobe survey, about one in three Americans aged 18 to 30 said they wanted to become influencers. That finding reflects aspirations in the United States, not Pakistan or the Gulf. Meanwhile, CreatorIQ's research found that the top 10 percent of creators received 62 percent of the creator payments it tracked in 2025, up from 53 percent in 2023.

These figures measure different things: one looks at career aspirations, while the other examines payments within CreatorIQ's tracked creator economy. Neither tells us how many young Pakistanis, Indians or Gulf residents want to become creators, or how many will earn a sustainable income from it.

But they highlight an important distinction. A career may look open to everyone while its financial rewards remain concentrated among a relatively small group.

That does not make content creation a bad choice. It makes realistic expectations essential.

The shortcuts, and the trap

Where success looks easier than it is, a market for shortcuts can emerge. Some online courses teach genuine skills. Others sell an appealing dream without showing how difficult it is to achieve.

Warning signs include a seller whose main income appears to come from selling the course itself, earnings screenshots without verifiable evidence, and promises of income that never acknowledge the possibility of failure.

Trading is one example. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan has warned the public about fraudulent online trading platforms and investment schemes. In the United States, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission says roughly two out of three retail forex traders lose money each quarter.

Some schemes go beyond misleading promises into alleged criminal activity. In September 2026, Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency reportedly detained 212 people following raids on three illegal call centers in Islamabad. On October 20, authorities arrested Faheem Akram in Lahore. US prosecutors accuse him of operating a website that sold more than five million counterfeit US postage labels and say the Postal Service suffered losses exceeding $126 million.

These are allegations, not convictions, and the cases are not evidence that creators as a group are dishonest. They do, however, illustrate the risks of online money-making schemes that promise easy returns or depend on deception.

There is another possible cost. High-profile fraud cases may make some international clients more cautious about dealing with people from the same country, including legitimate freelancers. That is a concern worth taking seriously, although the effect on clients' behaviour would need evidence to measure.

Who will fix the wiring?

Now consider a different kind of career.

An electrician must understand circuits, safety procedures and faults. A technician needs to know what to do when equipment fails. These skills take time to develop and cannot be replaced by copying a trending video. Much of this work happens away from cameras and rarely goes viral, yet homes, hospitals, factories and the digital world depend on it.

Data centres need electrical systems and cooling. Telecommunications networks require installation and maintenance. Solar systems need qualified people to install, inspect and repair them.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says growing use of artificial intelligence and demand for data centres are expected to increase electricity demand, creating opportunities for electricians. Federal projections do not forecast shortages, and conditions vary by trade and location, so the American experience cannot simply be transferred to Pakistan.

Pakistan faces its own employment pressures. The government's Labour Force Survey for 2024–25 put the national unemployment rate at 7.1 percent, up from 6.3 percent in 2020–21. Over the same period, agriculture's share of employment fell from 37.4 percent to 33.1 percent, while services rose from 37.2 percent to 41.2 percent.

In 2025, Pakistan's Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment registered 762,499 workers for overseas employment. Official registrations show the scale of labour migration, although they do not tell us how many of those workers were electricians, plumbers or other skilled tradespeople.

What remains difficult to establish from the figures cited here is how much electricians, plumbers and solar installers typically earn in Pakistan, how difficult they are to recruit in different regions, and how accessible good-quality training is. These are precisely the questions a young person needs answered before choosing a career.

A practical career should not be romanticized either. Training costs money, work can be physically demanding, safety matters, and not every trade offers good pay in every location. Young people need reliable information about those realities, not just advice to learn a skill.

Can the balance change?

We think it can, but not through persuasion alone.

Markets do not reward every valuable activity equally. A job can be essential and still be poorly paid. If demand for a particular skill grows faster than the supply of qualified workers, employers may respond with higher wages, better conditions or longer waiting times. But this is not automatic: pay also depends on local demand, training quality, competition, regulation and the ability of customers to afford the service.

The cost is the time it takes to adjust. Training can take years, and young people may spend valuable time chasing a promise that does not lead to a stable income.

Pakistan faces an additional challenge: when local opportunities or wages are insufficient, skilled workers may choose to go abroad. Migration can bring income to workers and their families, but it can also mean that some of the benefit of their training is realized elsewhere.

So telling young people to “learn a trade” is not enough. Training must lead to paid work. Qualifications must be trusted by employers. Work must be safe, and families must see practical careers as credible choices—not as a fallback for students who failed to achieve something better.

Social media itself can help. Tradespeople can make videos showing repairs or explaining safety risks. Teachers can make difficult ideas easier to understand. Engineers can show how bridges, buildings or electrical systems work. Businesses can use online platforms to find customers and demonstrate the quality of their work.

Not every video needs to educate. The aim is to make useful work more visible, so young people can see more than one model of success.

Five questions before choosing a career

Before treating an online trend as a career plan, ask yourself:

  1. What skill am I building? Is there something another person would genuinely pay me to do?

  2. What is the realistic path to income? How long will it take, what will it cost, and what evidence exists about typical earnings?

  3. What proof supports the promise? Can the results be independently verified, or am I seeing only selected winners?

  4. What if the platform changes? Would I still have a skill, qualification, portfolio or customer base?

  5. Can I combine skill with visibility? Could social media help me find customers for something valuable instead of being the only thing I know?

These questions apply to content creation as much as they do to any other career. A creator who learns filming, editing, storytelling, marketing or a specialised subject is building transferable skills. The strongest path may not be choosing between a profession and a platform, but using one to strengthen the other.

The internet cannot fix the wiring

The creator economy is not the enemy. It has opened doors for people without money, connections or access to traditional media. The danger is a narrower idea of success, in which being watched starts to look more important than being able to do something well.

A society needs entertainers and artists. It also needs electricians, mechanics, nurses, engineers, teachers and technicians. Many people will combine these roles, using digital platforms to make their work more visible and valuable.

The question is not whether young people should create content. It is whether they can see a future beyond chasing attention—and whether society gives them practical routes to build useful skills and earn a living.

The internet can help someone become famous. It can help a skilled worker find customers. It can teach a person how a machine works.

But when the screen goes dark and a wire catches fire, someone still needs to know how to fix it.

This article is general information and analysis, not financial, investment, legal or career advice. People named in connection with arrests or legal cases are accused or suspected, not convicted. The observations about social-media feeds are personal and informal, not a representative survey. Figures come from the sources listed below and may change.

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