Reading Makes You Hot
Emma Chamberlain is telling you to read more. Listen to her.
If someone came up to me and told me that a 19-year-old fashion-slash-beauty-slash-lifestyle YouTuber had released a video all about the benefits of reading, I probably wouldn’t believe them. But that’s Emma Chamberlain for you. Queen.
In one of her latest YouTube videos very appropriately titled ‘Reading Makes You Hot’, Emma talks about how incorporating reading into her daily routine has massively helped her with her anxiety. She didn’t talk about it for 3 minutes as part of a brand deal to make some extra money, she didn’t mention it in passing, and she surely didn’t do it to gain more followers and status. Quite the contrary, actually.
She released a 22-minute YouTube video PLUS a one hour and 4-minute podcast episode honestly talking about how reading has improved her life and opening up about how it has helped her cope with her anxiety and depression. That’s a total of one hour and 26 minutes talking about reading.
A Gen Z influencer. Talking about reading. For one hour and 26 minutes. To 10.1 million people. In an age where the average attention span is now shorter than a TikTok video, this is a huge statement that is likely to ricochet and encourage a few hundred thousand people to pick up a book.
For years now, Emma Chamberlain has become a role model for young girls and teenagers who take her fashion advice as gospel. If you don’t know who she is, from that sentence alone you’re probably thinking she is like any other social media influencer out there. But Emma is a bit different. Despite having over 10 million followers on YouTube and a net worth of $8 Million, she is relatable and approaches her audience in a friendly and familiar way.
In her videos we see her in her worn-down pyjamas, complaining about dirty dishes, burning leftovers, going grocery shopping, and then complaining about being anxious because she’s going grocery shopping. She is one of the few influencers out there who is very open about her struggles with anxiety, depression, and most recently the negative toll that social media has played on her mental health.
Emma has explicitly said, “going on my phone too much makes me sad.” This has become a universal feeling across the world as more and more young people are becoming aware of the negative impacts that repeated and long-term use of social media can have on their mood and wellbeing, something which Emma has been very vocal about.
In her video she says, “reading is harmless. Going on social media is not harmless. It makes you sad, it makes you compare yourself to other people, it makes you depressed.” And she couldn’t have been more right.
After talking about these serious mental health issues, Emma immediately proceeds to complain about how her dishes are still dirty even after being in the dish washer, but it’s nothing that a few ‘scrubby dubby’ can’t fix. And this is where the magic happens.
She is saying what every expert academic and cultured adult parent out there is saying, but she is doing so in a way that her target audience will actually listen because they look up to her and respect her. I can’t think of a single rebel teenager that will listen to an expert on TV talk about the benefits of reading during the evening news, but I can see plenty of people rushing to their nearest bookshop to buy a copy of East of Eden by John Steinbeck because that’s what Emma was reading in the video.
Times have changed, and consequently how people absorb information has also changed. Very few people are likely to incorporate reading into their lives because their parents or teachers told them to, but seeing a relatable social media influencer have a more stable routine that is helping her wellbeing and making her happier altogether might just do to the trick. The message is the same: read more, spend less time on your phone, and you’ll feel better about yourself. But the reason people are actually listening now is because of who is telling that message and how it’s being told.
At one point in the video Emma walks us through her new daily routine saying:
“I wake up at seven. I clean my kitchen. I make my coffee. I get back into bed, I read. I get up. I take a walk, possibly. I start working on something productive. I get back into bed, I read more. I cook. I read more. Then I go on my phone for a little bit, because I’m human! Back to the book, reading more. And that’s my daily schedule now.”
Most of her subscribers (in fact probably not even 0.0001% of her subscribers) can afford to have this routine because most of us go to school or have normal jobs, but that’s not the point. The point is, she is advocating a healthy routine to teenagers whose idea of a normal day is spending hours in front of a phone screen. She is showing all these screen-glued teenagers that if she (a social media influencer whose literal job is to post content online) can stay away from her phone and read instead, so can they.
Emma is using her influence to genuinely encourage a positive change in today’s society. Instead of using all her power influencing people to spend hundreds of pounds on beauty and make-up products (I know she still does this sometimes but cut her some slack), she is encouraging teenagers to pick up a book and read.
That’s influencing done right. Thank you, Emma.
