Immediately after our meeting, 16-year-old Ami Charlize is chauffeured from her home in Essex to Simon Cowell’s London townhouse to make TikTok videos with the mogul documenting his search for a new boy band. She’s still a little hoarse from a night at Wembley singing along to Taylor Swift (she’ll see her twice more as a corporate hospitality guest).
Ami (real name Amelie Hobson – Charlize is her middle name) started posting videos online when she was nine. Now she’s one of Britain’s most successful social media stars with a lucrative full-time career.
She has over 3.4 million followers on TikTok, another 676,000 on Instagram and 362,000 on Snapchat. She hosts a podcast, is an ambassador for clothing brand Pretty Little Thing and is now publishing a book, My world: challenges, changes and pursuing my dreams. As her mother Dawn Hobson, 52, says: ‘She just has a great life.’
Dawn won’t say exactly how much her daughter earns from advertising and brand endorsements on her channels, because she knows the envy it causes. Ami recently told her 346,000 YouTube followers: ‘I don’t have £1million in my bank account… I personally don’t think I’m rich.’
Ami, five years old, in her first school photo
Still, she’s clearly doing very well. Her father, Mark, 53, who built a water purification business so successful he retired at 50, provides her income. “For now, we’re investing it,” Dawn says.
‘We thought we could buy her a house for £200,000 to £300,000, but you get stamp duty paid on your first home, so she should do it when she’s older and buy the house she really wants to live in. That would save her a lot. But we’re not taking a penny from her.’
Ami is inundated with freebies from brands that want her to promote them. ‘We’re self-made, we grew up with nothing,’ says Dawn. ‘So we always tell Ami, “Be careful, don’t show everything you’ve been given, because what most people earn in a year, you can earn with one brand.”‘
Yet there is still jealousy. At school, Ami was bullied. ‘A lot of girls didn’t like the fact that I was doing well on social media,’ she says. ‘I was always worried, “Am I going to get beat up this time?” I saw nasty things written about me on walls. Once, at netball, girls started throwing balls at the back of my head. I had my group of friends, but I felt like no one was on my side.
I texted Mom: “I’m sick, I have to go home.” Sometimes I just walked away. I didn’t want to miss class, I wanted to miss playtime. Maybe life would have been easier if she had stopped using social media? “That’s what the teachers said,” Dawn says. “But it was the one part of Ami’s life she really loved. Why take that away from her?”
We are sitting in the Hobsons’ spacious kitchen. The French doors open to reveal a large lawn, mowed by a robot. The family’s Staffordshire bull terrier Hugo and later their XL bully Bluie greet me excitedly, then settle down on the couch for a nap.
Ami wears a crop top, black jeans and full makeup, her long blonde hair (spiced up with extensions) bouncing over her shoulders. She is talkative, friendly and extremely confident.
Ami now has a full-time career as an online influencer
Dawn gave up her job at an investment bank in the City to become a full-time mother after her second daughter Georgia, now 23, was born. There is a legal requirement that children under 16 be accompanied to photo shoots and meet-and-greet sessions with fans in places like shopping malls, so until last year Dawn accompanied Ami to such events.
Now that her daughter is older, she increasingly goes to work alone or accompanied by someone from her management team. This is especially true for evening activities. If alcohol is available, she must wear a wristband to show that she is under 18.
As a keen child dancer, Ami started using social media to promote herself. Encouraged by her older sisters Robyn, 27, who works in digital marketing, and Georgia, who edits her videos, both of whom also have large social media followings, she started uploading clips of herself lip-syncing to sad songs. ‘I would make myself cry by rubbing VapoRub under my eyes – probably not healthy. It was fun, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.’
Gradually, her videos became funnier, and by the age of 13, she had reached a million TikTok followers, with some clips being viewed more than ten million times. Kids loved watching her just chat about her life – for example, describing her skincare routines. ‘I don’t think anyone younger in the country was that hardcore [about regularly posting] like me.’
Dawn kept a close eye on Ami’s social media accounts. You can understand her anxiety: her Instagram is filled with photos of her often looking much older than her age, posing in revealing outfits and bikinis. ‘She was getting 200 messages a day and I was checking them,’ says Dawn. ‘I deleted all the messages [inappropriate] ‘pictures of men.’
Ami, who is severely dyslexic, left school after her GCSEs (she failed everything except maths, English and sports studies). ‘It was a difficult decision,’ says her mother. ‘My eldest daughter was going to university, and it’s not like I said, “Yeah, stop school!”
I was worried that Ami wouldn’t make any new friends, but then I thought about the time she tried to join a netball club and couldn’t make any friends because people either looked at her in awe or were mean to her. I thought, “What if she goes to university and it’s the same?”
They decided to become a full-time influencer. The authorities strongly advise against children dropping out of school before the age of 18, and supervise children who do, to make sure they are using their time purposefully and are not being exploited by their parents. ‘The council regularly call to make sure she is still on the right track and not being pushed by us to make money,’ says Dawn. ‘I think, “She’s really happy, she’s doing what she wants to do.”‘
Ami is making new friends through her work, but she is cautious. ‘Sometimes I spoil my friends too quickly and it can be thrown back in my face,’ she says. She had a boyfriend, Alfie, between the ages of 12 and 14, and fans who had followed the relationship and predicted they would marry reacted angrily when they broke up. ‘I was terrified of having to break the news to them.’
Now she tries to keep relationships private. ‘I didn’t show my last boyfriend’s face, but my followers would zoom in on a picture of his watch and figure out who he was by looking at posts I’d liked of someone wearing the same watch.’
There is a growing movement to ban smartphone ownership by under-16s, with studies linking their use to anxiety and loss of concentration, which is necessary for learning. Ami got her first one at 10, which she says is about the right age, as long as parents are supervising.
“Parents should know better than to let their six-year-olds on TikTok,” she says. “You can be exposed to so many dangerous things on there and you can’t scroll back and see what they’ve been watching. But there are pros and cons. I wouldn’t have enjoyed school as much if I hadn’t been able to make TikToks with my friends.”
‘Social media [companies] should be more responsible,’ says Dawn. ‘I’ve reported so many things – our address has been leaked all over the internet, but they’re not doing anything about it.’ She’s clearly proud of her daughter – she just wishes Ami would wear less lip liner and be careful with the fake tan.
“There’s orange on the toilet seat,” she sighs, then continues, “We just have to make sure she stays on the floor. But I love this little trip I get to take her on.”
Ami’s book, My world: challenges, changes and pursuing my dreamsis published by Ebury on 18th July, £16.99. To order a copy for £14.44 until 21st July, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.