A decade or two ago, it seemed like everyone wanted to be famous. The reality TV golden era of the 2000s saw the rise of shows like Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor, which offered an unprecedented platform for ‘ordinary’ people to take a shot at becoming a star overnight – and it was a shot many people took. One 2005 BBC article which interviewed hopefuls at a Big Brother audition in Birmingham, where the queue to meet the show’s casting team stretched “round the block”, concluded that “the overwhelming reason people wanted to be on the show” was the chance to become a celebrity.

Today, however, young people seem more ambivalent about fame. Take the winners of Love Island season nine, Kai and Sanam Fagan (the couple married last year). Despite a successful run on the same show, which catalysed Molly-Mae Hague’s career, both Kai and Sanam returned to their day jobs just months after returning home from the Mallorcan villa in 2023. “I didn’t go on Love Island for fame,” Sanam plainly told OK! magazine in 2024. “I was a social worker beforehand and still am.” More recently, 20-year-old American figure skater Alysa Liu told W Magazine that she regarded her celebrity as nothing more than an unfortunate byproduct of her skating career: “I actually don’t want to be famous. [But] unfortunately, the things I like to do are just going to make me famous.”

The statistics tell a similar story. While one 2010 survey found that over half of 16-year-olds wanted to be famous in lieu of a career – with more than a fifth planning to achieve this by appearing on a reality TV show – new YouGov research published this month found that just nine per cent of Gen Z want to be famous, with a paltry five aspiring to become an influencer, and 79 per cent saying they would “prefer a private life”. But when did fame shift from aspirational to undesirable – and why?

“I wouldn’t want to feel like my entire life is under a microscope”

Kim Allen, professor of sociology of youth and culture at the University of Leeds, stresses that the idea of young people being “fame-hungry” has always been overblown by the media. But she acknowledges that the advent of social media has likely made young people even less keen on the idea of being a celebrity than ever before. “Young people are well aware of the risks that come with social media visibility,” she explains. “They are aware of how, in a surveillance society, their online presence can leave a digital footprint that can adversely impact their opportunities”.

“I’ve never aspired to be famous,” says 27-year-old India. “Being famous seems like such an invasion of privacy. I wouldn’t want to feel like my entire life is under a microscope for people to prod and pick at every little thing. Personally, I prefer privacy and peace over being seen or popular.” Nilu feels similarly. “Absolutely nothing about being famous – particularly in the age of smartphones and social media, and especially as a woman – seems remotely desirable to me,” she says. “I don’t like people to know too much about my life, especially because the internet has made everyone insane and weird.”

Allen adds that her recent research has shown “a marked down-sizing of aspirations” among young people today. While 20 years ago, reality TV winners could live like kings – by combining his winnings with the money he earned from media opportunities, Big Brother 2005 winner Anthony Hutton “was able to buy a Range Rover, take a trip to Las Vegas and buy some property” – today, thanks to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, even tens of thousands of pounds doesn’t stretch very far (the winner of the 2023 series of Big Brother, Jordan Sangha, quipped that he’d be able to pay his council tax with the money). Essentially: what’s the point of aspiring to be famous if you don’t get to be rich too? “The social contract has been broken,” Allen continues. “Young people are well aware that the meritocratic idea that if they work hard, they will achieve their dreams is a hoax.”

Plus, Andy Warhol was right: reality TV set the stage for the advent of influencer culture in the late 2010s, and now we’re in an era where everyone can be famous (even if for 15 minutes). As a result, fame no longer feels as exclusive or exciting as it once was. “We’re in a culture where everyone is famous. You can post one viral video and everyone knows who you are,” India says. The erosion of the boundary between ‘normal person’ and ‘celebrity’ has also meant that we now have a far greater understanding of the nature of fame, with terms like ‘parasocial relationship’ entering common parlance. “In the 2000s, fame felt rare – it was much easier to maintain the illusion of what having fame, fortune, and lifestyle really was,” India continues. “With social media, the illusion started to crack. I think people see the ugly side now – the way celebrities are chewed up and spit out.”

It helps that a number of public figures have been more open about the realities of life in the limelight: 28-year-old artist Chappell Roan has been particularly candid in a number of TikTok videos about her desire for privacy. While her detractors have derided her as “ungrateful” for her success, it’s not hard to see why Roan feels so strongly about maintaining boundaries between her personal and professional life: as ‘celebrity culture’ snowballed in the 20th century in conjunction with the rise of mass media, some superfans went on to harass, stalk and murder their idols, from John Lennon, to Selena Quintanilla, to Christina Grimmie. 

It’s possible, of course, that this is just a cultural pendulum swing: maybe we just reached ‘peak celebrity’ in the 2010s (and subsequently ‘peak influencer’ in the early 2020s), and now we’ve gone back to regarding those who openly court public attention as crass and distasteful (it’s worth acknowledging that many establishment-adjacent commentators always sneered at working-class reality TV contestants who wanted some measure of wealth and status – see The Times branding the likes of Jade Goody as ‘SLEBs’: “Shameless, Libidinous, Egoistic, Barefaced Slaves to celebrity”). It’s possible – even likely – that the pendulum will swing back again at some point, and we’ll see the return of celebrities who embrace being “famous for being famous” (of course, some, like the Kardashians, never left). But for now, for Gen Z, it’s become abundantly clear that the old proverb was true all along: all that glitters is not gold.