Meet Sam Hurley, The Newest Teen TikTok Star Who's Blowing Up The App
He's just a teenager.
instagram Before we had YouTube, people would use file sharing websites to upload their own videos. But it wasn’t until Vine came around that the Internet collectively embraced the true comedic genius in six-second clips. Unfortunately, Vine was discontinued in 2017, and though its successor, V2, was created, things just weren’t the same.
Luckily, another video app came about that same year called TikTok. The app allows users to create short videos of 3 to 15 seconds, or longer, looping videos up to 60 seconds. Since 2018, it’s become the most downloaded app in the United States. And young millennials are taking full advantage of it.
Who is Sam Hurley? At just 16 years old — with his 17th birthday fast approaching — he’s a TikTok user known for posting music, comedy, pranks, and lip-sync material to the app.
To date, he has 2.1 million fans and 53.2 million “hearts” on the app, making him one of the most popular social media influencers on the app. In addition to his TikTok account, he’s also uploaded videos on YouTube, Instagram, and Cameo, though those accounts aren’t nearly as popular.
How did he get his start? Seeing as how kids these days have ambitions to be social media stars or influencers, rather than astronauts, it makes senseanother social media influencer sparked Hurley’s interest in following the same “career” path.
Hurley was inspired by Casey Neistat and Jay Alvarrez, both popular influencers.
Since 2015, he followed his dream, originally starting on the app muscal.ly, before it merged with TikTok. However, he took a short break before returning to the platform in August 2018, after Alvarrez asked his fans to join the app. Hurley rose in popularity quite quickly in less than a year!
But what do we know about his personal life? Hurley was born in 2003 in Texas, though his family later moved to Arkansas. He lived with his mom, Kristy, and two brothers, Turner and Hootie, the latter of which runs track and field at Oklahoma State University.
Like his brother, Hurley is also athletic and played basketball, baseball, and track and field growing up. It also appears he’s now into surfing, swimming, diving, cliff-jumping, and skating.
Currently, in addition to uploading videos on TikTok, he occasionally posts on Instagram, where he has over 400,000 followers, posting pictures of him playing various sports. His first-ever post was actually a selfie with comedian Chris D’Elia, showing just how far his videos have spread!
Hurley has also taken the opportunity to move off the internet and has appeared on the “Boys of Summer Tour 2019.” The tour features other influencers such as Zoe LaVerne, Brandon Rowland, Josh Richards, Desiree Montoya, Blake Gray, Zephan Clark, and Mads Lewis, among others.
Seeing as how Hurley is still so young, we look forward to seeing more from him.
Samantha Maffucci is an editor for YourTango who focuses on writing trending news and entertainment pieces. In her free time, you can find her obsessing about cats, wine, and all things Vanderpump Rules.