Slowly, the law is catching up with “kidfluencers.”
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 615. JR is the producer and he has uploaded the transcript and full lesson content to PlainEnglish.com/615.
Do you follow any family YouTube channels? Any child influencers? If so, have you given any thought to what their lives are like when the cameras are not running? Today’s story is all about the murky legal world of kidfluencers—they make big money for their parents, but they don’t have a lot of legal protections.
In the second half of the lesson, we’ll talk about the English expression “on the backs of.” And we have a song of the week.
Before we get started, though, I just wanted to remind you that JR shares an e-mail every Monday and Thursday, packed with tips, strategies, quizzes, and activities, all designed to help you engage more with English—and it’s all free. If you’re not getting those e-mails, make sure to go to PlainEnglish.com/mail and we’ll make sure you get them.
Kidfluencers make big money in legal grey area
Kidfluencers—child social media influencers—are big business. They review toys, clothes, school supplies, really anything. And they feature heavily in family accounts on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The kids do real work.
And they do this work in a legal vacuum : while most countries have laws protecting child labor, few countries have laws that protect young influencers. Now, though, governments are starting—starting—to turn their attention to the world of child influencers.
Why? There are three reasons to be concerned. First, the privacy rights of children. The second factor is what happens to the money they generate. And the third is working conditions.
Let’s go in order. We adults can choose what we post online. We know the pros and cons of appearing in photos and videos. We can give informed consent for how our names and images are used. Maybe we don’t always make the right decisions, but at least we can make that decision for ourselves.
Children, on the other hand , don’t have the ability to choose the way adults do. They’re too young to understand what it means to be in a video that will live online forever. And besides , they’re heavily directed by their parents. Can a seven- or eight-year-old really raise an objection, saying, “You know what, mom, I don’t feel comfortable with the content of this video”? Of course not. But the content of those videos will be online forever, and forever associated with the child’s name.
Next, what happens to the money? Kidfluencers can be big business. It is a simple fact that some people see their children as a money-spinning asset. If a family decides to create a YouTube channel, and make their child a star of the channel, and if that channel generates big money, then who has a right to that money? Right now, the kids—the ones whose names and faces appear in the videos—the ones who do a lot of work—they don’t have a right to anything.
You can easily imagine a situation where the parents use their kids’ cute appearances to get rich themselves. Some parents of YouTube stars live lavish lifestyles on the backs of their kids’ appearances. They are at pains to say all their family wealth is for the benefit of their children. I’m sure in many cases it is. But I’m also sure that in many cases, it’s not.
And finally, what about the working conditions? Child labor laws protect children from going to work in factories and businesses. Some laws apply to child actors and models. But these laws are written to protect children working outside the home. Kidfluencers work inside the home.
Many of them spend long hours in front of the camera, producing financially lucrative content for their parents, and they—the children—don’t have any legal protections. Labor laws haven’t been updated to account for this new reality, so the work these children do is in a legal grey area.
So far , the only national law to address these issues was passed in France in 2020. This law allows children to request that their images be removed from platforms—and this request doesn’t require consent of the parents. So a child under the age of 16 can request that all his or her likeness be removed from social media platforms. The French law also regulates how many hours a child influencer can be made to work.
There’s a financial element, too. Money earned directly by a child in France will be placed into a bank account for the child and held until age 16, just like for child models and actors. But this only covers contracts between the child and an outside company. It doesn’t protect children that feature in “family” accounts.
A new law in the American state of Illinois addresses this loophole. Under the new law, if a child in Illinois appears in a post or a video, the child is entitled to fifty percent of the earnings of that post. The money must be held in an escrow account until the child’s eighteenth birthday.
This is a start. There is still the question of enforcement: how can a state know the income generated by one specific post? And how can a state monitor whether half the income from a post is really set aside? It can’t. But this law would allow children to sue their parents later if their parents didn’t comply with the law.
This is long overdue. I saw an interview with a child influencer who said that her dad told her that he was her boss as well as her parent. And when she, the girl, said she didn’t want to do videos anymore, her parents told her they’d have to sell their new house.
There are leaked videos of parents berating their children for not acting happy or sad enough on camera. One YouTube parent filmed a video after the family’s dog died. The mom accidentally posted footage showing her criticizing her young son for not crying hard enough on camera. The son, through legitimate tears, protested that he was crying the way he naturally felt.
Parents exploiting children for their own financial gain is not new—this is just a new form of something very old. But hopefully more laws will catch up to this reality.
JR’s song of the week
It’s Thursday, so JR has selected an English song of the week for us. Today it’s “Future Starts Now” by Kim Petras. It’s a pop song; Kim Petras is German. She is the first transgender artist to have a number-one hit in the United States. Today’s song is “Future Starts Now” by Kim Petras, thank you JR.
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