Kith and Kin-fluencers

March 19, 2024 2:14 AM

There is only one state in the entire country—Illinois—where child influencers are legally entitled to a percentage of the money they help earn by being featured in monetized content. Although similar legislation has been introduced in several states this year, the fact remains: As of publication time, the vast majority of children who generate profits for their influencer parents—whether through brand deals, sponsorships, or direct payment from platforms—are legally unprotected and could be left with nothing in an industry valued at $21 billion in 2023. In the teeming, controversial world of family content creators, what happened to Vanessa is not uncommon. She spent the majority of her life up through her teenage years working on and being featured in her mother’s profitable blog and social media accounts, and she never saw a dime for her labor. from What’s the Price of a Childhood Turned Into Content? [Cosmopolitan]
posted by chavenet (19 comments total)

Remember when child labour was supposed to be a thing of the past*, not the new hotness?

*(the present, like the future, is not evenly distributed around the world, of course)
posted by Dysk at 2:18 AM on March 19 [14 favorites]

I'm thinking of Jackie Coogan and the Coogan Act.

(Trivia: Jackie Coogan, who was the kid in The Kid with Charlie Chaplin, later married Betty Grable, and still later played Uncle Fester on television.)
posted by pracowity at 2:36 AM on March 19 [17 favorites]

The number of parents who seem to think that they're entitled to exploit their children never ceases to dismay me. For a while, I avoided the r/personalfinance subreddit because it seemed like, every other time I looked at it, there was some young person whose parents, having ruined their own credit ratings, took out loans or credit cards in their children's names and ruined their credit ratings, too. I'm still resentful over the fact that my former legal guardians kept the money that I saved from working a paper route--a whopping $175.00--when I went to live with other relatives. I can't imagine someone making big bucks from vlogging about me going through puberty and keeping it all.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:37 AM on March 19 [14 favorites]

There's pending legislation to amend California's Coogan Act to cover social media and child influencers.

Though this draft language is varying degrees of awkward and wrong:

(e) “Vlog” means content shared on an online platform in exchange for compensation.
(f) “Vlogger” means a parent, legal guardian, or family residing in California that creates image or video content that is performed in California in exchange for compensation. “Vlogger” does not include any person under 18 years of age who produces their own content.
(g) “Vlogging” means the act of sharing content on an online platform in exchange for compensation.

I would imagine a fair amount of child influencers produce and share their own content, and then their parents wind up controlling some amount of the take, because they're minors.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:14 AM on March 19 [9 favorites]

When I see the word "kith" I see KITH, Kids In The Hall.

I'm surprised and pleased Illinois has taken steps in this area but wow, the only state to do so?
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:15 AM on March 19 [8 favorites]

I did not realize that the Coogan Law was California-only, and assumed it had been federal law for decades. How terribly naive of me.

Does anyone else wonder if "Vanessa" from the article might be the daughter of Heather Armstrong (Dooce)? She's about the right age.
posted by briank at 6:32 AM on March 19 [4 favorites]

briank, no, because the Armstrong children weren't homeschooled.
posted by cooker girl at 6:59 AM on March 19 [2 favorites]

Stop this timeline, I want to get off.

This is part of a series:
“We’re Never Doing This Again”: What It Took for These Parenting Influencers to Pull Their Kids Offline
The Parenting Influencers Who Won’t Stop Posting Their Children
posted by ellieBOA at 7:41 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]

Should it be the platform companies responsibility also? Like with global supply chains where companies (occasionally and where forced to) get in trouble because of labour practices somewhere down the supply chain.

Content creators upload content in exchange for money. YouTube uses that content to profit. So YouTube benefits financially from children's labour.

Yes, in a family business which legislators have sometimes given exceptions to (see e.g. family farms). But even then, adults who grew up contributing to family farms have sometimes later sued for a greater portion of inheritance of that farm due to unjust enrichment from the value of the property that came from their labour. See e.g. the mortgage payments the article talks about.

I think there should be legislation to address all the specifics of this situation though. And maybe that legislation should expose platform companies to liability.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:08 AM on March 19 [2 favorites]

Also, legislation about sharing profits doesn't address the vast majority of people doing this, who want to be influencers, put their children through the same, and don't make much or anything.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:14 AM on March 19 [8 favorites]

This kind of exploitation is deeply entwined with the bullshit idea of "parental rights" -- as though children are chattel and the likes of "Moms for Liberty" can imprison a teacher merely for having a same sex partner on grounds of violating their "parental rights."

Say it with me, loudly, time and again whenever this crap comes up:

Parents don't have rights.

(as parents, per se)

Children have rights, and parents have responsibilities to their children for their development and safety. Exploitation by parents is abuse, and should be punished as such.

Parents who make a living from their children are parasites, and the law should require escrow of 95+% of children's income in accounts or trusts that the parents are unable to access except for situations of force majeure by a court's order.
posted by tclark at 10:07 AM on March 19 [15 favorites]

> tiny frying pan: "I'm surprised and pleased Illinois has taken steps in this area but wow, the only state to do so?"

It seems like Illinois might have been first to get there partly due to the efforts of Shreya Nallamothu, a 15-year-old high-schooler who contacted her state senator as part of an independent study project.
posted by mhum at 10:21 AM on March 19 [9 favorites]

Should it be the platform companies responsibility also? Like with global supply chains where companies (occasionally and where forced to) get in trouble because of labour practices somewhere down the supply chain.

Yes, and this forces those companies to be absolutely ruthless when auditing and evaluating their suppliers. So much so that suppliers basically surrender all control of their business to the company sourcing their product.. You want Elon Musk to be able to come in and basically have co-parental rights to your children that rival your own? Because that's what you ask asking for if you want to mirror what happens in the manufacturing space.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 10:35 AM on March 19 [1 favorite]

Also, legislation about sharing profits doesn't address the vast majority of people doing this, who want to be influencers, put their children through the same, and don't make much or anything.

There are a number of states in the process of passing "Right to be Forgotten" or "Right to Delete" laws to let kids scrape their online footprints of their childhoods when they're adults. Of course, as people have pointed out, these will largely be limited to major platforms (Meta, etc.) and won't make the content disappear completely per se, just make it much harder to find.

That doesn't of course handle the potential mental health ramifications - I heard a podcast that included the testimony of one child-influencer who has PTSD/severe anxiety and has struggled to hold down a job throughout her 20s as a result.
posted by coffeecat at 11:39 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]

Back in the Usenet days, my childfree friends would post similar content (back then it was mostly articles on pageant kids) with the tagline: "And they say WE are the selfish ones?"

Living through your kids is bad enough. Making a living exploiting your kids is a new level of horrible. The worst part is, this has been happening for a very, very long time and will probably continue to happen, as long as society can come up with variations on this theme.
posted by luckynerd at 12:04 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

This is terrible of course but one thing I don't understand is - who is actually consuming this content? Who could possibly find it of any interest whatsoever what some kids and their parents are doing. I can't even summon much interest in people's Facebook posts about their children and these are people I at least vaguely know. Why would I want to watch videos of a stranger's kids?

This is an honest question by the way - not trying to act all superior to this content. I just really don't get it and if anyone wanted to take the time to explain it to me I'd really appreciate it.
posted by Tanya at 3:23 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

This is terrible of course but one thing I don't understand is - who is actually consuming this content?

There was another mefi fpp not too long ago that linked to a NYT article that answered this, at least in part. Creepy pedophiles are apparently consuming this content.

As if this weren't already horrifying enough...
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:53 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

Here's the previous mefi thread. Fair warning, it's horrifying (though solid investigative journalism from NYT.
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:55 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

Thanks litera scripta manet - that's absolutely horrifying.
posted by Tanya at 2:45 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]