This year has marked a significant change in the digital world. As content creation has grown more and more popular as sources of profit and income, more and more influencers have emerged in online spaces such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
A law issued in California titled Senate Bill 764, which has taken effect this year, instated new legislation that requires content creators that feature minors in at least 30 percent of their content to deposit 15 percent of the minor’s earnings in an account that will become accessible to them in their adulthood, according to Davis Gilbert Law. Child influencers are now included within the definition of “child performers,” so they are required to receive earnings.
This law has suspiciously coincided with the move across states of various family vlogging channels and content creators. Upon further speculation, some individuals online have stated that creators’ moves to areas such as the midwest and south of the United States is a strategic move to ensure the adults in the channels can expedite their profits.
Social media has given rise to many children’s lives displayed on the internet, and many have had concerns with the overt sharing of intimate details of such children’s lives. With many influencer families opting to showcase their children on various platforms, they become vulnerable with their images being easily accessible to predators and ill-meaning people on the other side of the screen.
Family vlogging has shown detrimental effects to a child’s well being, especially regarding how a parent or guardian has control over their public image, resulting in a loss in privacy. In addition, family vlogging has shown to disrupt socialization and normal development, which can also lead to negative impacts of relationships between the child and guardian, according to American Bar.
In fact, some cases have emerged centering family vlogging as a notorious perpetrator of child abuse. In 2023, Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested for child abuse after it was revealed that she harmed and abused her six children, in which she had made a YouTube channel called “8 Passengers” to document their lives, amassing 2.5 million subscribers. This is a prime example of the harmful nature of family vlogging, as it can be a vessel for child exploitation and abuse.
While these influencers constantly living in the public eye will likely never truly reveal if their move across the nation was fueled by monetary motivations or not, this overly dramatic trend of migration may not reflect just mere coincidence. Children who are forced to work at such a young age, especially in the public eye, at the bare minimum, deserve the revenue they are generating for their families.
The child influencer is a new concept, and can turn dangerous— unlike traditional child actors who have labor policies and contracts, children who work on online platforms are rarely monitored, and thus lack sufficient support in fair and ethical treatment. Going forward, it is paramount to enforce increased legislation to ensure the protection of the livelihood of these individuals before the profit of their guardians.
