AP Research

During the COVID pandemic, students were trapped within the vicinity of their own homes. Many students struggled to focus and keep up their studies. StudyTube became an important tool for students during this time. StudyTube is a community on YouTube that is targeted at students and promotes productivity, academic excellence, and motivation for studying. The main appeal of StudyTube is the aesthetic nature of the community, where everyone writes aesthetic notes and films aesthetic vlogs that romanticize the student life experience. Though this community seems to be bringing attention to the importance of education and helps people build a strong work ethic, the community does have its toxic attributes, advertising being one of the major ones. Viewers purchase goods and services thinking that these new tools will improve their productivity, and only partially of these goods actually bring changes to people’s productivity and study habits. I aim to measure what factors influence viewers of the StudyTube community to buy these products and services the most, and whether they believe that these purchases will truly increase their productivity and motivate them to study more. I will be surveying 32 high schoolers to find out what they find appealing from advertisements made by creators from the StudyTube community.