By Natalie Hamren
NKyTribune reporter
Part of an occasional series about the area’s college students.
Emma Webster created a YouTube channel in 2015 to help her cope with depression and anxiety. Therapy wasn’t helpful for her, so she decided to talk to a camera and make videos.
Six years later, the Northern Kentucky University senior electronic media and broadcasting major’s channel has over 18,000 subscribers and almost 2,000,000 views.
Emma Webster
Webster started off making videos about her life—school vlogs, homecoming videos and more. Once she started college at NKU, she realized her channel was taking off when people would come up to her and call her “that girl who does YouTube.”
“It didn’t matter where I was. I could be sitting in Griffin Hall about to start a lecture and somebody in my class would be like, ‘you look familiar’ and then it would just click,” Webster said. “Or it could even be at Starbucks in line and the barista would know. It really all came down to the interactions and I was like, ‘wow, I don’t know these people, yet they know me.’ It was just a very weird feeling. And I still feel weird to this day when it comes to things like that.”
Webster said the pandemic has negatively affected her channel. She said a lot of her videos were starting to become redundant since she was stuck inside doing online school. In addition, more people started creating their own YouTube videos in quarantine, Webster said, so this affected the algorithm and how many people viewed her videos.
However, Webster said that, because of the pandemic, it helped her realize that social media is a powerful tool. On Instagram, Webster has over 3,000 followers. She said she the pandemic has taught her the power of her voice. On her platform, she’s advocated for wearing masks safely during the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and equality for the LGBTQ+ community. Webster said that as a white person, she acknowledges her privilege and wants to use her platform for good.
Even though she hasn’t been as active on YouTube as she would prefer, she doesn’t let views and subscriber counts affect her mental health. Webster said she tries to remember that she started making YouTube videos to benefit her mental health, so she tries to avoid letting YouTube harm her mental health.
“I always think about the pain that I went through back then, and kind of—not relate to it—but just be like, ‘you’ve overcome this so you can overcome what you’re going through now,’” Webster said.
Webster said she has to remind herself to make content that makes her happy and not just create content that pleases other people.
“I am trying to go back to the mentality that I shouldn’t care about numbers. I shouldn’t care about rankings and stuff like that. The reason why I started to begin with was because of my mental health,” Webster said. “So I’m trying to remember all these things that I shouldn’t let it affect me. And just from that, I should create content that I’m happy with and not necessarily what people are expecting me to create.”
Emma
Although she isn’t actively posting YouTube videos right now, she said she misses being able to interact with her viewers. When she would upload a video, she said she could view comments right away and reply back to people.
“That interaction just made me realize that I wasn’t necessarily alone in my own little bubble,” Webster said.
Webster said being on YouTube has prepared her for her future career. Webster was the head entertainment producer for NKU her freshman year. During that, she realized she loved news. Currently, Webster wants to pursue a career in investigative journalism. She said making YouTube vides has helped her branch out in the field of communication, public relations and journalism.
Webster said being on YouTube and social media has given her confidence that she didn’t have when she first started posting. To anyone who wants to start posting on YouTube or social media but may be feeling insecure about it, Webster said to “just go for it.”
“If you’re nervous about what people are gonna say behind your back, so what? Somebody is going to say something about you regardless behind your back, so it really doesn’t make a difference if it’s coming online because you can just immediately block it or delete it, and it just magically disappears,” Webster said. “I would say not to let the numbers get to you because that can play a very big role in your mental health.”
Natalie Hamren is editor of the Northerner at NKU and the Michael Farrell intern at NKyTribune.
