Steemit is not a typical social app. It's powered by the Steem blockchain.
The Steem blockchain powers many real time content apps like Steemit, and is run by community members all around the world. To help protect them against bots and name squatters, a small fee is charged to create new accounts.
We're happy to cover this fee for you but we'll need your email and phone number to manually check that you're a real person. This process could take 1-2 weeks.
If you'd like to skip the queue or stay anonymous, you can pay the account creation fee using a third party service.