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TikTok: Welsh young people quitting their jobs for social media

 2 years ago
source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tiktok-welsh-young-people-quitting-210400252.html
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TikTok: Welsh young people quitting their jobs for social media

Jared Evitts - BBC Wales
Sun, August 28, 2022, 6:04 AM·5 min read
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"The first ever video I did with my Nan on TikTok, I think it's on almost 20 million views now."

During lockdown Lewis Leigh, from Merthyr Tydfil, started posting videos of him dancing with his family on TikTok.

Now, two years after his first post the 20-year-old has 1.7m followers, and has an agent to represent him.

He is one of a growing number of Welsh stars who consider TikTok their full time job.

A recent Ofcom report found that young people in Wales spend more time on TikTok than young people in any other part of the UK, with them spending over an hour on the app daily, with 79% of 15-24-year-olds who are online having a TikTok account.

From dancing nanas, to short prank videos, what is behind the growing use of the platform in Wales, and why are so many young people quitting their jobs to become TikTok stars?

Growing up in a house of dancers, Lewis posted short videos on Facebook of him dancing, which he says his friends loved and thought were really funny.

Then when he was in college TikTok became the next big thing, and when his friends encouraged him to give it a go, little did he know his videos would be viewed by millions around the world.

The videos, which take him 10 to 30 minutes to film, often include him dancing with his mum - who used to be a professional dancer - and dad - who did street dance for years.

But it's the videos with his Nanny Phyllis, 77, which have blown up the internet.

He said: "When I first asked her if she wanted to get involved in TikTok, she was like "yeah whatever Lew".

"Obviously me and my nan are the TikTok duo that everyone loves."

Lewis said doing the videos with his nan had made them much closer.

Now, Lewis, who quit his job in a restaurant after his work started to get in the way with events he needed to attend for social media, has an agent to represent him, which he said even with them taking a percentage of what he earnt was still worth it.


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