Teenage Life Is Streamed Live for Profit
On a recent afternoon in Los Angeles, 15-year- old Bryce Xavier went out to eat with his mom, pulled out his phone and started broadcasting. Across the country, teenagers’ phones lit up with a push notification: Bryce was live.
The phone framed Bryce in closeup. His mom sat off- camera across the table; her son had really come to eat with his fans. Tens of thousands of them poured into a virtual chat room that layered over his image. A bright stream of emoji floated up the side of Bryce’s face, the product of hundreds of fingers tapping the “like” button.
Bryce is a star on Live.ly, a yearold live- streaming platform with a core audience of teenage girls. Within three months of its release, Live. ly had unseated Periscope as the iPhone’s top live-streaming app.
Bryce identifies as a singer, actor, model and violinist — but he has distinguished himself as a Live.ly personality. Since joining the platform last summer, he’s accumulated over 33 million bits of “emoji- love,” the main metric of success.
His most dedicated fans also ship him physical emblems like teddy bears, packets of Sour Patch Kids and posters inscribed with their internet handles and notes like: “I love you. Follow me.”
A few months ago, he stopped attending school and started home schooling to accommodate the demands of his social media and entertainment work.
Live streaming has been hailed as an “authentic” respite from the artificial projections of other social platforms. Live video can’t be edited, filtered or deleted before it’s beamed out to the world. And fans can have questions and comments answered in real time. ( They are often some variation of “How old are you?” “Where do you live?” and “Will you go out with me?”)
All of that elevates forms of unstructured play that would feel amateurish on other platforms. You’ll find girls sitting on the floor mixing up homemade slime, or boys running their hands through their hair as if staring into the bedroom mirror. One account trails a home’s four cats around.
But on Live.ly, unlike on most oth- er teenage- centered social networks, you can earn real money.
Bryce said that virtual gifts bring him between $100 and $1, 200 a broadcast, depending on the timing and length of the show. ( Brands also ship him merchandise to wear on camera.) In May, the top 10 broadcasters on Live. ly brought in an average of $16,000 each.
Users pay real cash for Live. ly coins that can be traded for virtual “gifts” that are delivered to broadcasters midstream. Buy a gift, and your user name will be lifted above the textual scrum, beaming a bright cartoon animation.
The biggest spenders are ranked on the app. One day this month, the Number 1 contributor shelled out 120,000 Live. ly coins — the equivalent of around $1,200.
The videos reveal the moments when children at play learn a lesson about the adult world. Now that’s authentic.