By Shanty Tejeda, Age 11
Have you ever wanted to be a parent or kid influencer? Well, there’s a dark side to it. Maybe you’ve heard of Piper Rockelle, an influencer who started on TikTok in 2016 as a 9-year-old child. Once she got popular, her mom turned Piper into a money machine. There are many accounts like Piper’s. Today, three of the top 10 YouTubers are children, according to the Council on State Governments.
Have you ever scrolled through TikTok and seen the user @softscorpio? They were an influencer whose mother posted videos of them without their consent, according to Teen Vogue. Cam (@softscorpio) couldn’t do anything about it because they were still a child. When they grew up, Cam testified about a law to protect kids from social media. To this day they are still posting videos on this subject.
Claire is another former kidfluencer who was interviewed in Teen Vogue. Far from a normal influencer, her whole life was posted. A camera recorded everything: her first steps, her first word, her first award, even her being disciplined. “Nothing they do now is going to take back the years of work I had to put in,” she said to Teen Vogue.
There are some laws to protect child entertainers like actors. There is a law in California, inspired by a historical figure, Jackie Coogan. Jackie was a child actor in the 1920s who earned a lot of money. By the time he was old enough to claim it, he found out his family had used it all. Because of his activism, California passed Coogan’s Law, which states that every child actor must have a trust fund set aside with 15% of their earnings, that they can claim when they are older. But those laws don’t necessarily apply to online influencers.
“In old Hollywood, child actors were exploited. In 2024, it’s now child influencers,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement to NBC Bay Area.
California, Minnesota, Utah, and Illinois are expanding their child entertainer and child influencer laws, while 16 states are considering them. These laws set aside a trust account that has 15% of earnings set aside, similar to Coogan’s Law. Some of these laws also have a “takedown rule,” which gives child influencers the choice to take down all their posts when they’re 18.
Child influencers are slowly getting more protection laws. More states are expanding laws to include protecting kidfluencers. And some parents on the internet are choosing to protect their children’s identities by blurring their faces out from videos or covering them with an emoji or object. There is still more to do to fully fix the problem, but we are slowly making progress in protecting these kids.
