via @caroline_easom
On the same hand, accounts that center around child stars like Recess Therapy, Ryan’s World, and family vloggers like The LaBrant Fam still rack up hundreds of millions of views. The purveyors of the content we say we disapprove of still manage to get engagement from our eyeballs. The cognitive dissonance is… cognitive dissonance-ing. Because even if the behind-the-scenes realities of these accounts are well-managed and sustainable, kids still shouldn’t be influencers in the first place.
First is the question of labor. While child labor laws regarding more traditional entertainment are a well-trod area (even if they could use some improvement and modernization), the world of child labor laws pertaining to online content creation remains the Wild West. As recently as 2023, Illinois became the first state in the United States to pass a law that “protects the earnings of minors under 16 who are featured in online influencer content.” Minnesota passed a similar bill. However, for the rest of the 48 states, the question of protection for young social media stars is still on the table. Even these protections, though, seem like they’d be more complex to enforce than on a traditional set since child influencer teams operate within the bounds of a nuclear family. The separation between work time, family time, and education time could become easily blurred.
Even more important than the question of money is the question of celebrity. In these accounts, and others like them, the children appear under their own real names, their real faces unobscured—following in the influencer tradition and their parents or producers market them based on their personalities. The Recess Therapy kids all have their own unique sense of humor, their own cuteness factor, their own way of speaking—and it’s what the content revolves around. They’re why these videos get views, they’re the focus of the content, and they’re the reason the purveyors of these videos get paid in sponsorship deals.
via @janeinsane_
These videos seem cheeky and harmless to most viewers, where children interact with celebrities and offer up “kids say the darndest things” type banter. But we should question the very impulse to stick a camera in a child’s face and ask them questions. We might think we’re just capturing their “pure joy,” but what we’re really doing is asking them to perform a version of themselves that they will have to perform for the rest of their lives. They are being rewarded for being “authentic” on camera, to the point where they might be recognized in public. This is the beginning of a difficult blurring of public and private life—and at such a young age, too. It’s the reason artists like Chappell Roan appear under a stage name or choose to obscure their identities like Orville Peck or Sia. These kids don’t get the same opportunity to choose that for themselves. They’re too young to truly know what it means to be on camera, and especially too young to know what it means to have millions watching them.
These kids will grow up having had little to no control over their digital footprint, something that will follow them for the rest of their lives. They’ll grow up being known as “that kid from [xyz]” before they’re old enough to forge their own public paths. Fans will expect them to behave a certain way, make certain choices, and follow certain expectations. Celebrity is hard enough to contend with as an adult (watch any celebrity documentary ever). Starting early isn’t an advantage; it’s a major setback on the way to cultivating a healthy adulthood. This fact alone is enough to dismiss it as a category of content.
But even if the public forgets them before they reach adulthood, these children still come of age chasing the dopamine highs of online fame. As much as their parents might try to protect their children from the totality of their fame, there’s only so much obscuring you can do when their work paid for your house.
The problem doesn’t necessarily need to lie in nefarious behind-the-scenes activities. The problem is that this content exists in the first place. Parents aren’t supposed to profit from their child’s work. They certainly shouldn’t be depending on it. Plus, the harm done to their psyches certainly isn’t worth the cash bonus. Even if they make it out unscathed, it will be in spite of their parents’ choices, not because of them. If your life’s work and/or salary revolves around exploiting the personalities of your children and their lives, perhaps it’s time to get a different grift. At best, it is a means to profit from minors. Money, that, even if all of it is secured for them to use at a later date (which almost never happens), was earned when they were too young to consent to earning it. At worst, it’s an early introduction to fame that has the power to devastate.
The urge to film your kid comes from a natural place. Most of us have pointed a camera at a kid when they were doing something cute, even if the intent was simply to share it with family. And who among us hasn’t delighted in a video of a kid receiving an avocado as a gift and saying, “An avocado, thanks!”
These videos are part of the fabric of the internet. But we’re becoming far too knowledgeable about the harm the content does to those starring in it to keep condoning and consuming it. Perhaps, in the future, cute videos of children are better left to our family group chats and kept out of the public eye.