Close All Tabs - Children of the Vlog

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

The world of family vlogging is under scrutiny after the release of two new documentaries: HBO’s “An Update on Our Family” and Hulu’s “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.” The attention around Myka Stauffer and Ruby Franke has brought up questions about the dark side of family channels, and whether child influencers should have more say in their internet presence. In this episode, Morgan takes us through the family channel industry and the lack of legal protections for children online. We’ll hear from a former “mommy blogger kid” who’s fighting for the next generation of internet child stars, as well as Fortesa Latifi, a journalist who covers the industry. Together we’ll explore how posting and consuming this kind of content impacts the children growing up on our screens.  Further reading: Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content Read the transcript of the episode here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at [e-mail] You can also follow us on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Google AI helps block. Pesky scammers so my info stays secure and best of all unlimited plans start at just $35 a month. Whatever you do, your site with Google. Explore Google file wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. Block spam known to Google may not detect all spam calls. From KQED. I think when I first started to notice that like, hey, this is kind of really weird and like we need to kind of tone it down is when I was hit by a drunk driver.

Like immediately my mom pulled out her camera. The first responders were there. I was being strapped down to a stretcher because I had like a spinal injury. And I was really scared. I was vomiting. And my mom was just like in the back of the ambulance, like taking pictures and like taking little clips of everything going on. Kami Barrett is 26 now. And the internet has always been part of her life.

In the 2000s, her mom was a mommy blogger. And throughout her childhood, Kami's most vulnerable moments were posted online to thousands of strangers. It's something that I still just very vividly remember. I never know how to explain it other than just kind of like an out-of-body experience. It's like, I wanted my mom there to comfort me. You know, like I wanted my mom to hold my hand. And I was experiencing so much fear and pain and silence because I was just in shock.

I mean, I had a concussion. And meanwhile, my mom was just taking pictures and, like, writing up a post about literally what had just happened. So it was probably like a five-minute ambulance drive. From the time of the accident to the moment we got to the hospital, there was already one post up. And I remember a nurse came up to me and she asked me if I was in pain. And I just said, no, I want my mom.

But she was at the foot of the bed making a Facebook post. like another update. The mommy blogger scene of the early aughts laid the groundwork for family vlogging today. That's vlogging with a V, as in like video blog. It's an entire genre of content on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram. Hello everyone, and welcome back to my channel. Hey babies, welcome back.

My name is Bronte for those of you who are new here. Good morning. Let's cook breakfast for 10, 10-year-olds. Family vlogs and mom influencers make up a lot of, multi-billion dollar industry. Like the mommy blogs that came before them, family channels are often an outlet for parents to share advice and open up about the very difficult realities of raising tiny humans. But when your entire livelihood revolves around making content about your kids, I'll let Kami explain. It's caused a lot of paranoia, a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of things

that people don't necessarily think about. And throughout the years, it's been really hard to kind of navigate life with a non-consensual digital footprint. Kami was 15 then, and her mom had crossed the line plenty of times before. But this particular incident with a drunk driver changed everything for her. After that, I just felt very exposed, and I started to isolate myself a lot. So I had reconstructive leg surgery and I had a spinal injury. And so I was prescribed some heavy, like, narcotic pain medication. And that was kind of how I just got through the rest of my teen years by isolating and unfortunately becoming addicted to substances because I just wanted to numb everything that was happening in my real life.

And then I had also no control of what was being posted on social media. Kami checked herself into rehab when she turned 18. Since then, she's been working on rebuilding her relationship with her mom and also with the internet. That means protecting the kids who are going through what she went through. Kami started speaking out about her own experience a few years ago on TikTok to raise awareness and advocate for the right to privacy for child influencers. When I started seeing people talking about how these family channels don't affect kids and it's fine because they get all these free things, I just was like, hey, that's actually really not the case.

Like, it's actually really hard to grow up with all of these things attached to your name. Multiple states are trying to establish protections for kids who appear in their parents' content. Kemi actually testified in some of those hearings. A few states have already passed laws about child influencers. On paper, the fact that there's any legal protection for kids online is huge. But are these laws enforceable? And what gaps do they leave when it comes to regulating this massive content industry? This is Close All Taves.

I'm Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let's get into it. To understand the latest attempts to regulate it, we need to get into where this industry even started. New tab. How did family vlogging get so big?

And to walk us through this issue, we're calling up for Tessa Latifi. She's been reporting on this world of family channels for years and is working on a book about child influencers. So the first big family vlogging families really took off in the odds. So I want to say around like between 2006 to like 2010, that was when they first really started making a ton of money from YouTube. And I think part of the reason that the family. that got in then were so successful is because it was not oversaturated yet.

Right. So we had the early aughts of like, these are like the beginning of family vloggers. And then the mid-2010s to late 2010s, that was kind of what I have seen as the golden age of family vlogging. What was that age like? What kind of content were they making? Back in the day on YouTube, it was very much just like, come along with me as I get my six kids ready for school or like this is the day in the life of a mom with like five kids and you'll notice that's changed over the years like on youtube things had to ratchet up a lot it was a lot of challenges it was a lot of kind of trying to like outdo each other one video that sticks in mind for me is this one family the family fun pack i think they have like seven or eight kids and they did like a we're gonna

only eat a specific colored food so i have a challenge plan for the kids today they may may not like it, but I'm about to go tell them what it is right now. They have no idea. So like this kid only could eat green food for a day. This kid could only eat purple food for a day. And it was just like these kind of like silly challenges. And then once there became more people in the space, you had to do more to get noticed. So things started getting more personal and people would post videos of their sick kids and like come along with me to the emergency room for, you know, little Joey. You know, there's videos of him crying and bleeding or whatever. And then there's videos of young women talking about getting their menstrual cycles for the first time or getting the sex talk.

Like, I cannot tell you in the research of my book how many sex talk videos I stumbled upon from family bloggers. I don't want them to learn about sex and how we get pregnant from just anybody. I don't want them to learn from somebody at school. And then they also get kind of a momento to remind them as they get older. about this special time when they learned about how we have babies. Then I was just like, whoa, this is a little wild. Right. It seems like to get engagement, it's almost incentivized to be increasingly intimate and personal.

And I don't, I mean, exploitative, is that the right word, you know? I mean, I think a lot of people consider that the exact right word. In the research for my book, I talked to a bunch of family vloggers and I asked them, what is the content that does the best? And several of them told me, if a kid is hurt or sick or upset, that does really well. And so, you know, that kind of feeds into its own little monster there. So it seems like this pushback against family vloggers, this like conversation about protecting child influencers is relatively new. Like it's only made in the last couple of years that people are actually questioning the ethics of this industry. It's probably,

because there are particularly egregious cases of child abuse that came out of this industry. Can we talk about that? Yeah, so there's two cases that really stick out to me. And one is, I'm sure you're familiar with the Stauffer case. Micah Stoffer was a YouTuber who built a following with videos about cleaning tips, parenting, and then trying to get pregnant after a miscarriage. Back in 2016, Micah and her husband announced that they were in the process of adopting a disabled baby boy from China.

They were already popular, but their views skyrocketed with the adoption videos. They made a lot of monetized content about their adopted son and his medical needs. If anything, my child is not returnable, and we, without a doubt, in our minds, we knew. No matter what to state he came to us that we would love him. And then, followers noticed that he stopped appearing in videos. And then she made this like tearful apology video basically saying that he was living with another family and that he wasn't in their family anymore. And it kind of went viral as like this YouTube mom rehomed her adoptive son after making money off of him. And she was still after he wasn't living there still had videos on YouTube that were monetized about him. And so there was kind of this outcry. And so that was the first thing that I think really like planted the seed for people. And then the eight passengers and Ruby Frankie, I don't even want to call it a scandal because it's child abuse. It's not a scandal.

But that entire case. And what happened there? Yeah. So Ruby Frankie, her and her husband, Kevin, had this YouTube channel called Eight Passengers. And it was called Eight Passengers because they had six kids. And so the eight of them. And they had over two million subscribers at their height. I, like, kind of consider them to be family vlogging royalty, like, at the time.

They kind of, like, faced this sort of, like, cancellation where Ruby had had posted a video where her son said that he hadn't slept on a bed in seven months as punishment. She explained her teenage son, Chad, had been sleeping on a beanbag for months. I'm sleeping on a beanbag two October. And they gave my room back, like, two weeks ago. And people were like, wait, wait, wait, what? Like, everyone was like thought that Ruby had been kind of like a strict mom, but then this kind of like pushed it over the edge.

And so people started digging into like what is going on with this family. And then a couple years later, Ruby was arrested for aggravated child abuse. A once popular parenting YouTuber Ruby Frankie will spend up to 60 years in prison. She pleaded guilty to numerous charges, including things like holding a child's head underwater, putting her hand over a child's mouth and nose so they couldn't breathe, kicking a child while she was wearing boots. And so that was kind of the second thing. You had like Mika Stauffer and then you had Ruby Frankie where people were like, there is a darkness behind the perfect veneer of the YouTube vlogging family. Parents are supposed to be responsible for protecting their children.

But clearly, that isn't always happening with family vloggers in this very lucrative industry. So is there anything out there to protect these kids? I think that's a new tab. Child Influencer Protections. So last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom actually signed two pieces of legislation that have to do with child influencers. The first expands something called the Coogan Law. It's a 1939 law named after a silent film star named Jackie Coogan, who worked his entire childhood. And basically, Basically, by the time he was an adult, there was no money left for him. So now, California requires that 15% of whatever a child performer earns is saved in a trust

for when that child turns 18. But until last year, the Kuggen law only applied to child actors, as in kids who are working on actual film or television sets. This expansion extends the law to child content creators. includes vloggers, influencers, streamers, podcasters, whenever a kid, or their family, is paid directly to post something online. It's pretty straightforward. But California's other law is unclear.

Here's Fortessa again to explain. So SB 764 dictates that content creators who feature minor children in at least 30% of their content must set aside a proportionate percentage of the earnings. from that content to be held in a trust account until the child is 18. Now, you may be wondering, what does proportionate percentage even mean? So I've reached out to lawyers to ask and experts what a proportionate percentage, like what that really means in practice. And I haven't been able to get like a good, solid answer.

Like the worry here is that you would need like a forensic accountant who has a specialization in social media to even know the right amount of money that should have been saved for you. I can't imagine going back through maybe like a decade of like YouTube and TikTok videos and trying to calculate like, how much was I in this video, 29%. Okay, and they made $6,000 off it. Like, it's very complicated. But I don't know that there's a better way. Like I'm not saying I have a better idea.

And I think that kind of speaks to the convoluted nature of both the industry and attempts to regulate the industry. It doesn't even touch on other protections. for traditional child actors, like making sure they're in school or that they're allowed to take breaks. How do you even enforce something like that, though? I don't know. I think it's so difficult because this work is happening largely in the home, right? Like being a family vlogger, inherently your work is in your home and it is with your children. And that's really difficult. I mean, we know how this country feels about the government

stepping in between parents and children. Right. So how. How did these new laws in California compare to similar laws in other states? So Illinois was first, Minnesota was second, and California was third. Illinois's law is pretty similar to California's law. Minnesota takes it a step further, and they have this clause that's basically considered the right to be deleted. And so it states that upon reaching the age of 18, the former child influencer can request the deletion of content. I do think that that was Minnesota's attempt to, like, address the privacy concerns.

But it's also like, I don't know, I sound like a boomer when I say this, but I feel like when something is on the internet, it really is kind of on the internet forever, especially like with these famous kids. Like you see it with the eight passenger stuff, right? Like after Ruby was arrested for child abuse, their channel was taken off of YouTube. And I've asked family members and they didn't delete it. So it seems that YouTube took it offline in the wake of this arrest. But you can still find clips everywhere. Like if you look up Ruby Frankie on TikTok, you can watch entire vlogs. So this content thrives on platforms like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok.

But do you see these platforms taking any action to protect these kids? No. Why? Well, I mean, what's in it for them? know, like, I think these are companies that make a lot of money off of content featuring influence or kids. Family vlogging is a multi-billion dollar industry. I don't think that there's any reason for them to step in when it is so lucrative for them. Like, that's not their job to think about the child. That's the parent's job. The platform's job is to make money, which

they're doing off of this content. So social media platforms have no incentive to restrict family vlogging, and the new laws aren't foolproof, not to mention a mess to enforce. Like for Tessa mentioned, it's on the parents to have their kids' best interests at heart. Well, when it comes to influencers who make a living off of sharing almost every aspect of their lives, what does that even look like? The answer? After this break. Support for KQBD Podcasts, comes from Xfinity. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, your guaranteed five years of reliable Wi-Fi

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When it comes to influencers sharing their kids' lives online, is the tide changing it all? Okay, new tab. Influencers taking kids offline. I've noticed this in the last couple of years where huge influencers who built their considerable platforms off of like showing their kids and sharing their life with their kids have reverse course. And like the biggest person that comes to mind for me is Maya Knight. Right. She like was a single mom who had twins. Yes. Yeah. She would be like holding both the babies and like making bottles at the same time. and it was just like these like very like real videos.

She got super famous, got, yeah, like 8 million followers on TikTok. And after a year or two, she decided I'm going to take my daughters off of TikTok and and Instagram and everything. They're toddlers now and I have decided to not show them anymore. I'm making a choice for my daughters to protect them. Am I going to lose followers? Yes. I'm going to. Am I going to lose 8 million followers? I hope not. And there was like a huge amount

of backlash to that. And it was like fascinating because I think there were like several camps. Like some people were like, how dare you? We love them. Were their TikTok aunties? Like you can't do this, which like parisocial. Weird. Yeah. And like I'm sure like I've talked to other huge creators who have taken their kids offline and they told me that reactions like that totally solidify their choice and they're like this is why I'm doing it. And then there was another camp who were like, Maya has been exploiting her kids and now that she has this huge like brand, she's taking them off, but it's too late, which like I don't really understand as a concept. It's like, do you want that to happen or do you not? I think there's this like purity test kind of thing.

Like there's this idea among detractors that if you ever show your kid online at all, you are evil and immoral. And I totally do not believe that. And then there are people who have become moms in their influencing careers and have never shown their kids at all. And that's really fascinating to me as a reporter because a few years ago, there was never a question about whether an influencer would show their kid online or not. Like if you were having a baby, like that baby,

was going to be in a ton of content. But now when a public-facing influencer is pregnant, there is the question of like, which camp kind of are they going to go into? Right. I remember when like family bloggers would announce that they were pregnant again. They would start an Instagram account for the fetus post like ultrasounds. Like they were posting the kid before they're even like born. Yeah, yeah. And narrating like the fetus's thoughts and like yeah. Yeah. Like I can't to meet you all. It's like, that is a six-month-old fetus. Yeah, no, that kind of stuff has definitely like fallen out of favor. Although, like, I don't want to make it seem as though the majority of influencers aren't showing their kids because they are, definitely. But there is this growing

contingent where they're not. And this is even happening among, like, regular people. Like, it's not only influencers. It's like regular people who have a couple hundred followers who are like, eh, I don't really want to put my kid on Instagram or on TikTok. It's interesting because I'll interview these parents and I'm like, why did you not want to put your kid online or why did you not want to announce your pregnancy? And they have like specific reasons like online footprint, which again, we were not talking about a few years ago or like worries about AI. But there's also just this like sense of like uneasiness and just being like, why would I? Which is fascinating to me. I mean, you just had a baby.

So congratulations, by the way. And you also fell into that camp of like not announcing your pregnancy. you kind of just hard launched with like a baby. So how did you come to that decision to never post your child's face online? Yeah. You know, I thought about this a lot. And obviously I was doing like a lot of this reporting on influencer kids and like what their lives are like. And not that I'm an influencer in any way, but like I said, kind of the way that influencers

live their lives trickles down to the rest of us like plebeians. And so we were all kind of just becoming more aware of like privacy. And when I was pregnant, I just had this gut feeling that I just didn't want anyone who didn't know me in real life to know. And like even now I feel so strongly about it that I don't want her to be on the internet and that I don't want information or photos of her to be on the internet. Yeah. I mean, there's also a lot of discussion about whether or not you can like talk about your kids online or like write about parenting without, you know, exposing your kid. I mean, what are your thoughts on this? I am very much trying to figure this out because I have benefited so much from the writing and the content of other moms specifically and like being able to watch really personal moments in their lives and have them talk about postpartum depression or their struggles with sleep training or whatever it is. And like I have learned things about their kids. Like I have benefited so much. And I'm sure they've benefited from sharing it. And I don't think that we need to go back to a time when moms were not

allowed to talk about what motherhood and parenthood is like. And I, and I'm saying moms because most parenthood content online is, is by moms. I've heard this from other creators, too, is that they try to think, what will my kid think about this in five years, in 10 years, and 15 years? And I've also talked to kids of those first mommy bloggers. And I'm not saying this is the experience of every kid of a mom blogger. But the ones that I've talked to are like, it is incredible to read how my mom felt when she was raising me and what she thought. And they have these like incredible records, you know?

So I also, I don't want to take it too far on one side either. Can you speak to the way that this industry and just overarching culture is changing the relationships between kids and parents? Yeah. It's just so complicated. And obviously, parents have to make choices for their kids that the kids might not agree with later. But I think how many choices has really just been exacerbated by the internet. And by the way, it's able to change people's lives. And that's the thing is I hear from a lot of parents who are like, my kid is begging me to start a YouTube channel. Like my kid wants to be a YouTuber or an influencer. And like, yeah, that I understand. And like from the kid's point of view, like, why wouldn't they want to? You know, but I think the parent has to make the best decision that they can at the time.

And I think sometimes those decisions change like you see with parents changing their minds later and taking their kids off. line. And I think as a culture, just like generally, we need to be more accepting of people like changing their minds. This is one of those internet rabbit holes that ultimately just doesn't have a single answer at the end. These laws are a start, but enacting real change also involves a larger cultural shift in the way that we consume and post content. Remember Kamey? She's the former mommy blogger kid who grew up and became an advocate for child influencers. She thinks that we thinks kids should be allowed to exist without a camera in their face. And if you're an influencer kid, here's her advice to you. I mean, as you get older, you're going to meet so many people who are so

different from your parents are so different from the people who have viewed you, your entire childhood, and they're going to see you for who you are instead of seeing you for what your parents posted. I think it's really important to literally be a kid. Like, by yourself, at school. Even if you have a friend that you trust to talk to about this, it's so hard carrying all of it on your shoulders alone, but you don't have to. And I wish that I had known that as a kid.

Yeah, we're fighting for y'all. We're not going to stop. For now, let's close these tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our producer is Maya Kueva. Chris Agusa is our senior editor. Jen Cheen is KQED's director of podcasts and helps edit the show.

Sound design by Maya Cueva and original music by Chris Agusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Mahas Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Springer is our podcast operations manager and Holly Kernan is our chief content officer. Support for this program comes from B-Rong-Hoo and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California, local.

Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gator on red switches. If you have any feedback or a topic you think we should cover, hit us up at close all tabs at kkud.org. Follow us on Instagram at close all tabs pod. And if you're enjoying the show, give us a rating on Apple Podcast. or whatever platform you use. Thanks for listening.

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