How childhood dream jobs have changed over the years: Glenn Dwight

Glenn Dwight's childhood dream was driving one of these bad boys, but the 4am start time was a drawback. Photo / John Stone

When I was a kid, the big question adults loved to ask was, “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

It was a simple game of future-guessing.

You didn’t need to know what the job actually involved, or whether it paid well, or if you even stood a chance.

You just picked whatever sounded coolest.

For some, it was an astronaut, firefighter or All Black. For me, it was a train driver.

The logic was watertight. Trains were massive, they made epic noises, and you got to pull the horn … which, at 7 years old, felt like having the power of God and Thomas the Tank Engine combined. That ticked all the boxes.

Ask the same question to a kid today and you’ll probably get a very different answer. Train driver? Not a chance.

These days, it’s influencer, YouTuber, Twitch streamer or professional gamer.

Jobs that involve ring lights, subscriber counts and explaining to your parents (and this writer) what on earth “unboxing” means.

Now, imagine telling that train-driving dreamer version of yourself that one day people would make a living by filming themselves dancing next to a fridge or reviewing chicken nuggets on something called Instagram.

You’d have laughed so hard your heavily watered-down cordial would’ve come out of your nose.

And you’d have no idea what an Instagram was… or why anyone would want to follow one.

Part of this career evolution, of course, comes down to technology.

When I was growing up, nobody had the internet, let alone a phone with a camera better than the news crew at TVNZ.

Making a video of yourself meant commandeering your parents’ giant VHS recorder, which was heavier than the family labrador and came with a strap that cut into your shoulder like a seatbelt made of fencing wire.

Editing was only possible if you had two VCRs and the hand-eye co-ordination of an Formula One driver.

Now you can edit, filter, add music, filter again and share it with the world in seconds.

Add “felt cute, might delete later” and you’ve played your irony card.

So it’s no wonder kids dream of internet fame.

Why wait years for someone to “discover” you when you can upload a TikTok and get discovered in the time it takes someone like me to work out how to turn the torch off on their phone?

And let’s not pretend our own childhood ambitions were realistic.

Astronaut? Only about 600 humans have ever done it.

All Black? About double those odds, unless you have Barrett lineage.

It makes sense that today's kids dream of influencer fame, with advances in technology. Photo / 123rf

Even “vet” sounded glamorous until you realised it meant sticking your arm inside a cow at 5am on a frosty Waikato morning.

But dreaming was never about reality.

It was about imagining a future where you got to do something amazing.

It didn’t matter that most of us would end up in regular jobs like being an accountant, a teacher or the person who runs goat yoga sessions in Golden Bay. Which sounds peaceful until a goat misinterpreted “mountain pose”.

But what fascinates me is how kids now see influencers almost the way we once saw superheroes.

They’re larger than life, they live exciting (and heavily edited) lives, and they have powers we couldn’t imagine, like earning money just by drinking an energy drink on camera.

My own liquid consumption has been tragically undervalued.

Maybe that’s the thing about every generation, we all chase what looks magical at the time.

We wanted to fly to space or score the winning try.

Today’s kids want to build worlds, make people laugh and be seen by millions.

It’s the same spark, just through a different screen.

So what will the next generation of dream jobs look like?

Will kids in 10 years say, “I want to be a professional AI prompt engineer for robots who review chicken nuggets”?

Or “I want to moderate arguments between self-driving cars”?

Or maybe, just maybe, it’ll come full circle, and being a train driver will be cool again.

After all, they were doing electric vehicles long before Tesla showed up.

If you think about it, our dream jobs are just a reflection of the times.

Our grandparents dreamed of being farmers, nurses or shopkeepers, all solid, practical roles that kept communities running.

We dreamed of travel, adventure, and glamour, probably thanks to Saturday-morning cartoons and Air New Zealand posters with palm trees on them.

Today’s kids dream of being seen.

Not just by family or neighbours, but by the whole world.

Their dream jobs are about connection, creativity and carving out a personal brand.

Of course, reality eventually taps us all on the shoulder.

Train drivers have to wake up at 4am.

Vets spend as much time with AI (not the ChatGPT kind) as they do with kittens.

Influencers discover it’s not all free sneakers and viral dances; sometimes the algorithm forgets you and the free sneakers are gone in a tick (or swoosh).

Every dream job, it turns out, has fine print.

But that’s the beauty of them. They’re not meant to be realistic.

They exist to fuel your imagination and give you something to aim for.

Whether you end up on YouTube or sitting across from Ben from accounts, 400 rows deep in a spreadsheet, it all started with a dream.

Perhaps in 30 years we’ll be laughing about how quaint it was when kids wanted to be influencers, while our grandkids are saying, “When I grow up, I want to be a professional time-travel guide.”

As for me, I’ll still take train driver.