Fame or family?
Family channels across social media are generating profit at the expense of exploiting children
Graphic by Anya Biswas, Staff Writer & Katelyn Wu, Staff Writer
McKenna Ryan, Staff Writer
Families often use video cameras on birthdays, holidays, or the first days of school to commemorate these special moments. Home videos of a child’s first steps or soccer games are sources of happiness and nostalgia for families. However, there is a difference between these home videos and uploading them for millions to see. The majority of children grow and develop under the supervision of their parental figures and close relatives, primarily shielded from the public eye and maintaining a level of privacy. The children of family YouTube channels, however, are put on display from a very young age, many even from birth. Family YouTube channels are often centered around children and their lives in the family. They invite their viewers, mainly children, to join their families by watching and engaging with their content. Although family channels appear to be wholesome and harmless, many parents use their channels to make a profit at the cost of their children’s mental or physical health. When the everyday lives of children are released as content for an uncontrollable audience, they are exposed to a new world of risk, all at the hands of their parents.
When you’re a lifestyle vlogger, your life and your job are one; every moment is captured for the camera. What you reveal or present is your choice, but when you’re a toddler, you don’t have a say. Children cannot consent to and have no ability to stop their parents from posting anything. These children play a major part in the exploitation as they cannot possibly comprehend what it means to be living in “The Truman Show.” Consisting of controversial parents, Catherine and Austin McBroom, and their three children, the ACE Family is one of the most well-known family channels on social media. With pregnancy announcement pranks, multi-part birth vlogs, and child-focused content, the entirety of the children’s lives is presented as YouTube content. Reaching 10 million subscribers in two years and having over 4.5 billion views to date, a scary amount of the show’s 18.6 million subscribers have watched the children from before birth to the present day. Content on the internet is timeless because, even if the children grow up and have their parents remove the videos, there will always be a copy of them available elsewhere. There is no separation between personal family life and the life portrayed on the internet—from doctors’ visits and playdates to the more intimate, vulnerable moments of childhood that you wouldn’t want strangers viewing as they please. With the little privacy these kids have, highly dangerous risks emerge such as stalking and kidnapping. Perhaps the most common one is that pedophiles can watch and engage with their content. It becomes a larger issue when parents make an Instagram page for their children from the moment they are born, cultivating a wide and obsessive following of pedophiles. The ACE family has Instagram accounts for all of their children. The oldest daughter is verified and has almost 5 million followers. The content reaches millions of people and, even if it is all well-intentioned, it still violates the child’s privacy. The family has admitted that they attract stalkers, meaning that portions of their audience are potential threats to their children, but continue to utilize this for profit. It is widely known that pedophiles watch TikToks involving children, and it’s escalating to the point where parents are aware of it and choose not to do anything about it. It’s no longer about just protecting your kid’s privacy; it’s about protecting your kid in general. Parents are valuing attention and money over the well-being of their children.
Profit is possibly the only benefit of family vlogging channels. Fame has brought the parents managing these channels to abandon the well-being of their children for their own benefit. Most videos by family channels appear scripted, but the children forced to participate in the challenges or activities are incapable of distinguishing between when their parents are joking and they are not, so the pranks or emotional moments the children encounter feel real. In September 2021, family vlogger Jordan Cheyenne released a video regarding the critical condition of her family’s dog. However, at the end of the video, she unintentionally left a clip of her forcing her son to pose for the video’s thumbnail while he was clearly upset about his dog. Instead of comforting her weeping son, Cheyenne ignored his emotions and shifted her priority to YouTube profit. YouTube parents have turned a blind eye to their parental duties and submitted to the poor ethics of exploiting children for profit. Vlogger parents justify recording emotional situations as simply trying to show “real life.” However, in moments that are genuinely affecting your child, the appropriate reaction is not to wait to comfort them until you have set up the perfect camera angle. Another popular family channel, the LaBrant Fam, has created content that concerns fans and viewers. In one of their videos, the family members pulled a prank where they told their daughter Everleigh that they were giving away their dog. This caused Everleigh great emotional distress and tears that were then filmed and produced for financial gain. The family is believed to be generating $5.5 million per year from YouTube, and there’s little evidence of that money going toward Everleigh or their other children, the “stars” of the family channel.
A variety of child labor laws have been put in place to protect children working in the entertainment industry. Now, many have called for legislation to extend these policies to minors working in the social media realm. In Hollywood, child actors are protected by the Coogan law, which requires parents to put 15% of a minor’s gross wages into a trust account, called a Coogan account. In 2018, California State Assembly member Kansen Chu attempted to pass legislation that would classify “social media advertising” as a form of child labor. This would require minors to obtain work permits, which would offer them greater financial protections since children in California can only get a work permit if they have a Coogan account. But before it was written into law, the legislation was considerably weakened. In France, a law passed in 2021 required any earnings of a child influencer to be put into a bank account that they can only access once they turn 16. This law enforces a “right to be forgotten,” allowing the child to request that the content they appear in to be taken off the internet. Similarly, in October 2021, representatives from YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat agreed that parents should have the ability to erase online data for their children or teens, a concept that appears in proposed updates to the historic Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
The dark side of family vlogging consists of parents exploiting their children in the pursuit of money and fame. While they claim that the money their children generate is used to improve their quality of living, these earnings come at the cost of the kids' well-being. Without legislation dedicated to protecting children from exploitation on apps like YouTube and TikTok, parents will continue to take advantage of their children due to their age and inability to consent.
