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A kid influencer is someone under the age of 18 who have built/are building a presence on social media platforms by creating content to generate views and engagements. Kid influencers operate in a similar fashion to adult influencers; they share their hobbies and personal activities with their audiences, while also marketing products that align with their brand through paid partnerships. As many social media platforms have an age minimum requiring account holders to be at least 13 years of age or older, this results in many of the accounts being run alongside the parent/guardian of the child when they are younger than 13 years-old.
The rise of this kind of advertising has raised many ethical and legal questions, especially since most of these influencer's main fan bases are young children. It has also brought up concerns about protecting the child themselves from any corruption and/or manipulation from their parent or the brands they work with.
Children have been in the entertainment space for a long time. In 1914, Jackie Coogan was appearing in silent films. Coogan appeared in many films after that. By the time he turned 21 the $4 million he had earned throughout his career as a child star had been wasted by his parents. Coogan sued them, and was awarded $126,000.[1] This led to the creation of the California Child Actor's Bill (Coogan Act), which was passed in 1939. [2]
There is a concern that parents are exploiting their children on social media for money. There is currently no regulation for how much exposure parents showcase their children on social media. There is also no regulation for how much these parents make their children work on social media (doing TikToks, YouTube videos, etc.). There is also no regulation for who and where the money goes to that is generated through the content produced.[4] These children cannot consent to being broadcasted online either since they are just doing what their parents ask, and since they are growing up in the world of social media they think it is normal. There is also the concern that family centric content creators are broadcasting their kids far too often. Many already established family content creators have their cameras on the child as soon as they are born. These newborns are put onto display and are now part of the influencer family. Since they are only babies they have no say or consent to how they are being portrayed online.[5]
Since most kid influencers don't have a say in the social media world they are thrusted into they may not like how they have been portrayed online. As these kids turn into teens and adults they will start to form their own identities and how they were portrayed by their parents online may not be who they truly are. They will also have to deal with the embarrassment of being recorded in their vulnerable moments. One of the main distinctions between child influencers and child actors is that the actors are playing a character the influencers are not. An example of this comes from an influencer family called The Labrant Fam, they filmed a video of them telling their daughter that they were giving away their family dog as an April Fools Joke. Their daughter was filmed crying and posted online for content. The Labrants, later, posted a video apologizing for putting their daughter in that spot.[4]
There are very few laws protecting child influencers. There is, however, a bill is currently in committee that will is supposed to "Protecting the interests of minor children featured on for-profit family vlogs."[6] This lack of protection has raised ethical concerns as to how child influencers will be protected in the future due to the fact that they participate in sponsored deals.[1] Since children cannot legally operate social media accounts until the age of 13,[7] their parents will do it for them. Parents will also take brand deals and sponsorships and will subject the children to advertise these sponsors, which the parents will take the money from sponsorships since the children do not know better. Since there are few laws protecting kid influencers this is legal. There is a push for laws such as the Coogan Act[2] and the Fair Childs Labor Act of 1938 (FLSA)[8] to protect child influencers as well.
The California Child Protection Bill more commonly referred to as the Coogan Act, is a bill that requires that all money earned by children in the entertainment industry is their own. Their parents do control over the money. 15% of the money earned is placed in a Coogan Account which is a trust account made for the child's earnings.[2] This bill does not apply to child influencers, but there is a push for this this bill to be reviewed to include protection for child influencers.
France is the only country protecting child influencers by law. Bruno Studer, who is a French politician, has a bill that is in effect in France called the Studer Bill. This bill requires parents of child influencers to "apply for authorization before their child is allowed to appear in any monetized content and that money will be locked away in an account."[5] This bill is a protective measure to ensure that children influencers will be properly compensated for the work they do.
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