Shane Dawson facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Shane Dawson
Dawson in July 2016
Personal information
Born	Shane Lee Yaw (1988-07-19) July 19, 1988 (age 36) Long Beach, California, U.S.
Education	Lakewood High School
Occupation	YouTuber actor filmmaker writer musician
Spouse(s)	Ryland Adams ​ (m. 2023)​
YouTube information
Years active	2008–present
Genre	Docuseries vlog sketch comedy music beauty conspiracy theories
Subscribers	18.9 million (main channel) 29.38 million (combined)
Total views	4.37 billion (main channel) 4.8 billion (combined)
Associated acts	BlackBoxTV Lisa Schwartz Brittani Louise Taylor Jeffree Star Joe Nation
Subscriber and view counts updated as of August 25, 2024.

Shane Lee Yaw (born July 19, 1988), known online as Shane Dawson, is an American YouTuber, actor, filmmaker, writer, and musician. Shane became famous on YouTube after he started making videos in 2008. He was 19 years old then. In just two years, his videos got over 500 million views.

In his early videos, Shane often made funny comedy sketches. He played different characters, pretended to be famous people, and joked about popular culture. He has released six original songs, like "Superluv!", and many funny versions of popular music videos. In 2013, he started a podcast called Shane and Friends. It had 140 episodes over four years. In 2014, he directed, produced, edited, and starred in the movie Not Cool. He also appeared in the TV show The Chair. Shane has also acted in the horror movie Smiley (2012) and the comedy movie Internet Famous (2016).

Starting in 2015, Shane began talking about conspiracy theories on his YouTube channel. This led to his 2019 web series Conspiracy Series with Shane Dawson. In 2017, he released his first documentary series on YouTube. In this series, he met his father again after a long time. From 2019 to 2020, he created and appeared in the documentary series The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star. This series got over 130 million views. His most watched documentary series are about Jeffree Star, Jake Paul, and Tana Mongeau.

Shane Dawson has written two books that became New York Times bestsellers. These books are I Hate Myselfie (2015) and It Gets Worse (2016). His three YouTube channels have together received over 4.5 billion views. Since 2017, he has only updated his main channel. This channel has over 20 million subscribers and more than 4 billion views.

Growing Up and Early Life

Shane Lee Yaw was born in Long Beach, California, on July 19, 1988. He has two older brothers, Jacob (born 1980) and Jerid (born 1985). They grew up with their single mother, Teresa. Shane went to school in Lakewood, California, and finished Lakewood High School in 2006. He was teased at school because of his weight. His brothers helped him during these tough times. Later, he lost 150 pounds (68 kg). Shane first became interested in making videos when he used to make videos for school projects with his friends.

Shane's YouTube Journey

Shane Dawson at the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards in 2010

Starting on YouTube (2008–2010)

On March 10, 2008, Shane Dawson created his first YouTube channel, called "ShaneDawsonTV". The oldest video still on this channel, "Kermit the Frog and Me", was uploaded about four months later. Shane sometimes posts new videos there. These are mostly short web films, funny music video spoofs, movie trailer spoofs, and his own original music. He used to post other videos on his second channel, "ShaneDawsonTV2", which is now called "Human Emoji". However, he mostly stopped using this channel in 2012.

His third and main YouTube channel, "Shane", is where he used to post daily video blogs (vlogs). Now, he posts new content there from Monday to Friday. He started using this main channel in May 2010. In November 2009, Shane was featured on the TV show Attack of the Show!. In 2010, Forbes magazine listed him as the 25th most famous web celebrity.

TV Shows and Music (2010–2013)

On August 11, 2010, Shane announced he was making a 30-minute TV pilot called SD High. A company called Take180 helped him get the money for it. The pilot was based on two videos Shane uploaded in Summer 2010. It was about a teenage boy at school and his friends. Shane planned to release the pilot on his YouTube channel in September 2010. However, a TV studio contacted him to make the pilot for their channel.

Shane Dawson at VidCon 2012

Shane said there were some unsure things about the pilot, but it might become a TV show later. On March 26, 2011, Shane made a YouTube video explaining he was working with Happy Madison Productions, Sony Pictures, and other YouTubers to create a TV show.

In January 2012, Shane said he was working on a new TV show. It would be partly based on his life working at a weight loss center. He was excited about it and said it was "kind of like Arrested Development, but – not." On May 16, 2012, Shane shared in a vlog that he was working on a comedy-horror movie. He wanted to write "something like a teen comedy" but also "scary and fun". In November 2012, Shane said he was talking about directing a full-length movie.

In 2012, Shane also shared that he was working on a music project. In March 2012, he announced his first big song, "Superluv!", would be released that month. The song came out on March 31, 2012, on iTunes. Its music video also came out on his YouTube channel the same day. The song did well, reaching number 87 in Ireland and number 28 on the US iTunes Pop Chart.

On May 8, 2012, Shane said he started working on his next song, called "The Vacation Song". He showed about 10 seconds of a "rough edit" and said he wanted to change the song's mood. He felt it was "a little too happy" for a breakup song. He wanted it to be more like Kelly Clarkson's 'Since U Been Gone'. The song was released on June 23, 2012, with the music video coming out a week later. In October 2012, a movie called Smiley came out in theaters, starring Shane. In December, Shane released a new song called "Maybe This Christmas".

Shane Dawson with a fan at VidCon 2014

Podcasts, Movies, and Books (2013–2016)

In June 2013, Shane started a podcast called Shane and Friends. In 2013, Shane also said he was trying to get a talk show made. He also kept trying to get the TV series about him working at a weight loss center picked up. On November 12, 2013, Shane announced he was working on the weight loss center project with Sony Pictures Television for NBC. The project was named Losin' It. If it got picked up, it would be a funny TV show about a successful former client at a weight loss center. This person decides to become a consultant there and then becomes the manager.

On April 4, 2014, Shane announced he had directed and starred in a comedy movie in Pittsburgh earlier that year. The movie was made with a budget of $800,000 and was released on September 19, 2014. On June 26, he announced the movie would be called Not Cool. It was part of a Starz TV series called The Chair. In this series, two new directors were given the same script. Each had to make their own movie from it. People watched both films and voted online for their favorite. Not Cool competed against Anna Martemucci's Holidaysburg. Shane won the competition and received a $250,000 prize to work on another movie project.

In early 2015, Shane released a book called I Hate Myselfie: A Collection of Essays. This book was published by Atria Books/Keywords Press. In July 2016, Shane released another book called It Gets Worse: A Collection of Essays. It was also published by Atria/Keywords Press.

Shane Dawson with a fan in 2016

YouTube Documentary Series (2017–2020)

In June 2018, Shane uploaded a three-part documentary series called The Truth About TanaCon. This series was about the TanaCon event, the company that organized it (Good Times), and how the event affected fans. The series got tens of millions of views in one week and a lot of attention from the media. In August 2018, Shane continued making documentaries. He covered makeup artist Jeffree Star in a five-part series called The Secret World of Jeffree Star. This series also got a lot of media attention. Shane interviewed Jeffree Star and spent a day with him. He learned about Jeffree's business, Jeffree Star Cosmetics. In September 2018, Shane made an eight-part series about YouTuber Jake Paul called The Mind of Jake Paul.

In January and February 2019, Shane released a two-part series about conspiracy theories called Conspiracy Series with Shane Dawson. In July 2019, Shane returned to YouTube with a one-hour documentary video called The Return of Eugenia Cooney. This video was about Internet personality Eugenia Cooney. Earlier that year, Eugenia had said she was taking a break from social media to focus on her health.

In October 2019, Shane released The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star. This series followed Shane and Jeffree as they planned and designed a new makeup and merchandise collection called The Conspiracy Collection.

Shane's Personal Life

Shane Dawson started dating YouTuber Lisa Schwartz in December 2011. In July 2015, he shared that they had separated. He then began dating YouTuber Ryland Adams in 2016. They got engaged on March 19, 2019. Shane used to live in Calabasas, California. In August 2021, he moved to Colorado, where he and Ryland bought a farm for $2.2 million.

On January 3, 2023, Shane and Ryland got married in Colorado. In July of the same year, they announced on Ryland's vlog channel that they were expecting twin babies. On December 10, 2023, Shane announced that their twin sons had been born.

Movies Shane Has Been In

Films

Television Shows

Web Series

Podcasts Hosted by Shane

Shane's Music

Songs Released

Awards and Recognitions

See also

In Spanish: Shane Dawson para niños