Internet literacy in the age of family vloggers
What is the internet doing to children who are broadcasted to thousands of followers every week? The discussion about internet literacy needs to be revisited in the light of family vloggers.
Unsplash, by Sylwia Bartyzel
I grew up with YouTube beauty influencers, turned lifestyle influencers, turned vloggers. I watched them talk about mascara, decor, fashion, cleaning products, and life in general. I followed them from being teenagers, to young adults, getting married, buying a house, and becoming a parent. And that was usually the end of it for me. For me, the lifecycle of a YouTube subscription ended with the influencer becoming a parent. Why? Because back then, 100% of them showed their kids front and center. Backstory and all, where they were born, their health issues, etc.
As someone who is incredibly shy, and never willing to show her face on the internet unless for the one profile picture I have, I never understood how parents could be so careless about it all. How could they simply show their kid’s life for all to see? I, as an adult, wasn’t and am not willing to show my face on the internet, but they are putting their kids out there and everyone simply proceeded as normal. Like it was no big deal. But it is!
I will never forget the video that made me stop it all. The vlog channel of Sammi Maria and her showing her daughter in almost every YouTube video back then. In one video, she showed some new baby products and that snippet got picked up by a national UK newspaper. It was an article about mommy influencers and they used a collage of images as the main image: screenshots from several mommy influencers with their kids. In a later video, Sammi was outraged that they had used her kid’s face without her permission - and this is when I stopped watching momfluencers altogether. How weird was it for these people to criticize mainstream media for putting their kid’s face out there, when they have done it from the very beginning, not only showing their kid’s face but revealing sensitive details about their child’s life?
I am not surprised that, now that many of these influencer’s children are teenagers, stories like this are coming to light:
Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content
A TikToker reading an anonymous letter from a teen whose family has a vlog channel
A woman speaking out about being raised on a mommy blog (not a video blog)
Quotes from these stories that stuck with me:
“Nothing was secret and there was the constant feeling of being on. Even in the privacy of our home, I had to expect a camera to be around. Even to this day, I am stressed out whenever I have a moment for herself, I feel like I need to share it.” (YouTube)
“Any money you get will be greatly overshadowed by years of suffering… your child will never be normal… I never consented to being online.” (Teen Vogue)
Child and family influencers and the law
Looking more into it I can’t fathom the fact that lawmakers haven’t caught up with this. Child labor is illegal (in most parts of the world) and child actors are heavily protected - but child vloggers are not. How?
In Germany (my home country), parents have the right to publish pictures of their kids without their consent, until they are 14, unless the picture is somewhat embarrassing. Is this clearly defined? To a degree it is, but not really. But the problem is, children cannot sue their parents, I mean they can legally, but what child has the knowledge to start a legal proceeding?
Then there are YouTube’s own regulations that footage of underage children in bedrooms and bathrooms isn't allowed. But those family vlogger videos make a lot of ad revenue, so YouTube doesn't have an incentive to take any action.
And despite a recent scandal, where pedophiles used the comment section to mark “particularly interesting” footage in the videos, YouTube still hasn’t taken much action. Technically, comments should be disabled the second an underage person is visible in the video, somehow family vlogging is still a grey area, and commenting is still possible.
And then there is the complete opposite side, where the kids are the influencers themselves. The channel is run by their parents of course, but the focus is the child and not the family. It clearly violates YouTube’s guidelines, but it is a money machine, so why should they shut it down?
There are two great videos by Alicia Joe about child and family influencers (in German), showing how off-putting child and family influencing is and that a more public discussion of this topic is long overdue. Another good video is this one from CBS (in English): Kid influencers: Few rules, big money.
Parental internet literacy
The problem is so multi-faceted and new that I wondered how we got here. I mean, children cannot create a channel under the age of 13, they cannot sign advertising or sponsorship contracts - but the parents can. I often wondered why parents would subject their kids to this, the trauma and embarrassment that comes with it.
The only answer that I have to this is: the parents of family or child influencer channels didn’t grow up with social media themselves when they were children. It simply didn’t exist. They didn’t have to live through school with embarrassing content of them online. So they never really had to think about it. And now that the money is coming in, why should they?
I do hope that the increasing number of stories by children of family influencers will be the much-needed change.
XOXO
Annika