Front Burner - The dark side of family influencers

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Vanessa had her entire life put online during the 2000s “mommy blogger” era. She’s in her 20s now. And as she tells influence culture journalist Fortesa Latifi, her life was anything but glamorous.The TikTok generation of child influencers is a multi-billion dollar industry. And with that money, comes concerns of exploitation.Fortesa Latifi recently published a three part series and mini-doc for Cosmopolitan called “The Sharenting Reckoning”. She joins us to talk about it.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Ow! Ow, Charlie! Ow! Charlie, that really hurt! It may be hard to believe, and this is probably going to make a lot of you feel very old,

but that video went viral 17 years ago. It marked a very specific time on the internet and in the world of family vlogging. Suddenly, families could make serious money just by uploading a video of their child to YouTube. And with that, family influencers were born. Now, of course, all you have to do today is open up TikTok or Instagram to see your favorite online kid known as Gen Alpha Influencers. These are kids born between 2010 and 2024, and they have millions of followers, some of who have watched them since birth. Today, I'm talking to you for Tessa Latifi. She's been looking into this multi-billion dollar family influencer industry.

She covers influencer culture and recently published a three-part series and mini-doc for Cosmopolitan called The Sherenting Reckoning. called the Sharenting Reckoning. We're going to talk about what happened to those original family vlogger kids and whether these Gen Alpha influencers are being exploited by their parents for views. Hi, Fortessa. Thank you so much for coming onto the show and doing this with us today. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. So when did you first remember there being this obsession with following the lives of kids, literally from, I guess, birth? You know, I think that this really started around 2005 when the first mommy blogs took off. And at that time, like mommy blogs were a new thing. This wasn't something that we had. We didn't have mom influencers. We didn't have parent influencers and people got really into these people's lives. And then we had YouTube

take off. And so some family vloggers started migrating there and making content there. And of course, like the video content was even more interesting than the written content. And then we had Instagram and TikTok and now we are where we are. And talk to me a little bit about, you know, what kind of content these vloggers were making initially. What did it look like? Sure. So initially, the interesting thing about mommy bloggers, at least in in early when they started around 2005, is that a lot of their content was was around how motherhood wasn't perfect. And I think that it's easy to take for granted now that we have conversations about how difficult motherhood specifically is and parenthood. But back then, we didn't really have those conversations publicly. And these moms were coming online and saying,

hey, actually being a mom is really hard. And I had a mental breakdown today and I don't know what to do. And so that was really like fresh content that people weren't getting from anyone. And then it kind of turned into the Instagram era of mom influencing where everything had to be picture perfect. And now we're kind of swinging back around to like what I call like the hot mess mom, where she's like, you know, I'm a disaster, but this is what real life looks like. So it's kind of interesting how it changes. Yeah, that is a really interesting trajectory to think about. And then what about the kids? Like how have the kids' roles evolved over time?

I think the kids' roles have really blossomed in the beginning with Mommy Bloggers. It was really about the parents. And you didn't get to know the kids as much, but now the kids are characters in their own rights. And they have their own social media platforms with hundreds of thousands of followers. And they're kind of like these little characters that people love to follow. I know as part of your investigation, you actually spoke with a young woman who is part of one of these influencer families. I think you started back in the 2010 era. And she's in her 20s now. And I know that you're protecting her identity. But what did she tell you about what it was like for her growing up with her life, you know, online in one way or another? I think one of the most striking things that she told me was just how much pressure she felt knowing that so much of her family's financial health was dependent on the content that they made.

health was dependent on the content that they made. Just the amount of responsibility that I felt at a young age for things that no child should have to worry about, whether there's food on the table or whether we're making monthly payments on our house or where our next paycheck is going to come from. She would have to stay up until, you know, one or two in the morning retaking and retaking this, this shoot or a video to make sure that it was perfect. And if her mom didn't think that her smile was bright enough or that she was, you know, saying her lines with enough enthusiasm, she, it would kind of devolve into like, well, do you not care about our family? Do you not want us to make our, make our mortgage payment next month? And so I think the pressure was really striking to me. And, you know, I know

there's one part where she talks about doing sponsored posts and stuff, right? Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, she did a lot of sponsored content. So her mom had a lot of brand deals and her daughter was included in those, not only creating the content with her, but scripting it and starring in it. And Vanessa actually told me that when she had her first menstrual cycle, her mom got them a sponsored post around sanitary pads. I had to pose with the sanitary pads and like do a video of them and talk about like my period experience. And that was so mortifying to me being only like 14 at the time, I just felt like I wanted to like crawl into a hole and never come out. I've come across a lot of people.

You know, when she looks back at that time and she reflects on her childhood, did she feel like she had one? No. She said that being the child of an influencer parent, that you have to grow up really fast. I think just her awareness of how much financial stress the family could be in if she wasn't, you know, compliant was really stressful to her. And she said it felt like she had to grow up a lot faster than other kids. And she said around the time she was 10, she went to another young friend's house and she was like astonished that like they didn't have to worry about finances or making content or anything. And so I think that really shows

the difference between her childhood and other childhoods. I've come across a lot of people in college that know my mom from her blog. And that's always such a weird experience for me that other people know me and perceive me in a specific way. I have no control over my image or my voice or my story. So just knowing that that's out there forever is just overwhelming. It's hard to conceive sometimes even. You mentioned the mother saying that they need to make their mortgage payments. And when we're talking about money here, I wonder if you can give me a sense of, you know, how much money we're talking about and how it's changed over time, how these influencers have been making money? Sure. So this is a multi-billion dollar industry, which is pretty astonishing. And I think people don't realize how much money is in it. I mean, at the low end, it's a couple thousand dollars

for a brand deal or something. But at the high end, these people are making hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars a year. The money on social media is crazy. How much would you make off of brand deals? Low six figures. And you know, we bust our ass in full time jobs and one like 15 second video would make my entire paycheck. Let's say on an average month, how much money do you make from TikTok? Between $3,000 and $7,000. Do you know? And it depends on how you get paid. So in America, we have like the TikTok creator fund. So if you have over, I believe it's 10,000 followers, you get paid based on the amount of views that you get on TikTok.

And that's the same for YouTube. You get paid based on the amount of views that you have. And then besides just getting paid for views, you also have sponsored posts or brand deals. So these people have hugely varying amounts of income and different streams of income. You can certainly see the allure, hey? Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit more with you about what some of these influencers are saying to you.

But before we get into that, you know, let's talk a bit more about the criticisms and concerns around what they're doing. And so what are the main criticisms and concerns here? So the criticisms and concerns are that these kids don't have privacy, that they can be overworked because there's really, at least in the U.S., there's only one state that has legislation at all regarding influencer children. And it's about the profit that they bring in. It's not about, you know, like work hours or anything that we have in other areas of child labor. People are worried that their privacy is exploited, that their vulnerable moments are exploited,

that they're going to grow up with this online footprint that they didn't ask for, sometimes reaching back to gestation, which is really striking. So there are a lot of worries. And there's really this cultural reckoning, I think, happening around child influencers and family vloggers. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. I know that you spoke to some of the big ones right now, like the Bucket List family. I've definitely seen these guys pop up on my Instagram feed. They have 5 million followers, the Garza crew, 4.8 million followers, and this mad mama. And so just give me a snapshot of the kind of things that they're sharing online like today.

Sure. So the Bucket List family, their whole shtick is that they travel the world with their three children. And so it's a lot of travel content. My wife and I and our little kids are about to go on a trip around the world. And we're going to sell everything we own in our little apartment. And then we're going to go westwardward we currently live in Provo Utah 2020 it's a big year we've set a big goal a new year's resolution together as a family we're going to good morning from Mexico so we've been in Bataan now for over a week we've been spending a lot of time with the monks at the monasteries. They've faced some backlash because they tend to not shy away from posting their kids in vulnerable moments,

whether they're crying or there's a video of their daughter saying goodbye to her deceased great-grandmother's casket. There's some really intensely vulnerable moments. And so people feel very specifically about that family. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the Garza crew, I saw one where their seven-year-old twin daughters are posting, like, get ready with me videos in Sephora hauls. So, like, I got this new MyStyler from Glow recipe because they love me. Time to put this baby on. We're Gen Alpha influencers. Of course, we are obsessed with skincare. We're Gen Alpha influencers. Of course we are obsessed with skin care. We're Gen Alpha influencers. Of course my favorite stores are Sephora and Ulta.

We're Gen Alpha influencers. Those videos have caused a lot of conversations too, right? Oh yeah. I mean, that goes back to the whole Sephora kids thing. But when I talked to Adria, the mom behind the Garza crew, she was like, this is satirical. We're just joking around. Like the kids know that they're like playing a role. Um, but it's difficult, right? Because that seven, I think you're still figuring out what's real and what's not generally. Um, and so I think it can be difficult to tell the difference between that and like people were really, really, um, obsessed with that video in kind of a bad way. Like there was a lot of hate going around about why are these seven-year-olds allowed to do this?

Why are they doing Sephora hauls? And so, you know, I mean, I think that speaks to once you put things out there, you don't know how they're going to be received. I've seen people talk about this idea of like a fractured identity, right? and people talk about this idea of like a fractured identity, right? When the kids don't really know which part of themselves are their real selves and which part of themselves are themselves in front of like an iPhone camera. How do the parents justify it, right? Like when you're talking to them, what do they say about why they keep doing it? So the bucket list family dad, he said, this is our family album. These are our home videos. This is just I'm a normal dad. I take out the camera when something interesting or, you know, poignant is happening. And I think that's something that you hear a lot from family

vloggers is that they're kind of creating their own memories. But I mean, there's the question there of like, we all have home videos from our childhoods, you know, but they're not all posted to millions of people. And then for Adria, I think she was saying that her daughter, this is her way of allowing her daughters to kind of be in the entertainment industry while being able to keep an eye on them because they're only in her

house, you know, they're not like out on a set somewhere and so it's kind of allowing them to explore their creativity in that way but I mean there's no way that you can look at all of this and not think about the enormous amounts of money that are at stake as well yeah yeah and I know you know some of the parents that you talked to, you talked about college funds for their kids. We do a lot with toy companies. It's just fun for them. They love it. They don't see it as work, but obviously they're making money doing it. And so it definitely is something that is going to help provide for their future. Because I don't know if they said this to you, but I was thinking maybe, you know, they know, I'm sure at least some of them can make the argument they can make money while being with

their kids as opposed to like out at work, right? So I assume there's all sorts of ways that one could try to justify what's going on. Are any of them kind of struggling with it? Yeah, I do think that they're thinking about the controversy that's going on around them. I talked to one young mom, I think she's 24, and she has a million followers on TikTok. And she said that she can't help but question sometimes, like, am I exploiting my kid? Like, is this what I'm doing? But at the same time, like, she's a young single mom. And like you said, this allows her to like stay at home with her child and probably give her a life that might not have been possible otherwise and so I think they're grappling with it but at the same time it's such an enormous opportunity

that I think it's difficult to fully turn away from. There is one example I wonder if we could talk about a little bit that you discuss in your piece. So one of the moms, Veronica Merritt, who runs the account This Mad Mama, she has 12 kids, I think, right? Yes. And there's this post where she posts a video of her two daughters and she calls the younger kid the weird kid at school and the older kid the popular and bubbly kid. And just tell me a little bit about what ended up happening there. Yeah. So she posted this video and it was kind of, I think, showing like how different her daughters are. Like, yeah, there's this one who's

kind of bubbly. There's this one who she calls kind of weird and like maybe a little bit more introverted. And she posted the video and it was doing really well. And my younger daughter said she kind of felt embarrassed about it because it seems almost like I'm insulting her. And it wasn't my intention, but because uh Veronica the mother was telling me about this and I asked Okay, what did you do? And she was like well I decided that the fair thing to do would be to split the profits I agreed with both of the girls that I wouldn't take any of the money from that video that I was letting it 50 50

With them so she said, you know, it was doing too well to just like take down, but at least this way they could get some money from it. And last time I checked with her, the video had made like $1,100. So they'd gotten about 550 each. She didn't want me to delete the video. They didn't want me to take it down, but they were happy about getting the money. I imagine some of these kids are old enough to read the comments though, right? Which, which can be brutal. Yeah. The comments. I mean, you know how the Internet is, right? Like the Internet is is not the nicest place all the time. And yeah, these kids are old enough to read that. And Veronica told me that sometimes her kids will read comments about themselves or about their mom and come to them, come to their mom and say, you know, what is this about? about their mom and come to them, come to their mom and say, you know, what is this about? And she kind of has to steer them away from that. But yeah, I mean, I can imagine that that's really difficult because like, here's my thing with this entire story is that growing up is so hard already

and it is so fraught and it is so intense. And I just cannot imagine having that big of an audience to watch. And some of these kids are like real celebrities, right? There's another anecdote that you tell where one of the other moms that you spoke to, she's in Dubai and they're getting like surrounded by like a bunch of fans. Yeah, totally. I mean, that's the thing, right? Is like celebrities aren't like these kids are celebrities like I think it's hard to put a number on it like once you pass what amount of followers are you a celebrity I'm not really sure what that amount is but like

if you have millions of followers like you are a celebrity and you are living that life but it's interesting because the influencer kids don't have a defined role to hide behind like this is something i think about a lot is that like the celebrities the kids celebrities from like my youth like macaulay culkin was famous for being kevin mcallister right you guys give up or you're thirsty for more or like hillary duff was famous for being Lizzie McGuire. Best dressed, here I come. But like these kids are famous for being themselves. Right. And of course, we know hearing from them now how much pressure people like Macaulay Culkin and Hilary Duff faced. Another character you spoke to that I want to talk to you about is the nanny, right?

There was a nanny that worked with one of these influencer families. And what did she tell you about what she witnessed and how she felt about it? Yeah, she said it was really intense. There was a lot of work going on behind the scenes. And I think that's something that people take for granted is that I don't know why, but we tend to think that content creation is not that much work. But it is an enormous amount of work. There was always drama. We were always always filming always having to look a certain way so when if you were being filmed that you didn't come off on the camera

looking bad if you and so she would say you know she would get the kids home from school they would feed them and then it would be hours of you know creating and filming and taking pictures. And sometimes the kids just really didn't want to do it. You know, like they're kids. Sometimes kids don't want to do things. And she told me that sometimes the mom of the family would be like, but your TikTok family wants to see you or like, you know, this is how we make our money. Like, we have to do this. And so there was a level of what she called guilt tripping oh your tiktok family that's that's that's interesting um yeah i just when i see them like the first thing that i think about as someone with two little kids is like i can't even get my own kids to stand in the same frame uh together i can't even imagine how much time and effort

some of these you know videos with choreographed routines or whatever take. You did talk to some parents that have stopped sharing their kids, though. And talk to me a little bit about what happened when they did that and why they did that. Yeah, it's interesting because there really is what feels like this kind of small movement within the influencer industry of even people who created platforms of millions of followers off of sharing their kids are starting to rethink that decision. And I think it has to do with the cultural reckoning that I mentioned and kind of the conversation and the zeitgeist where people are like, wait, are we overdoing this? And it's interesting because one of the people that I talked to, his name is Grant. He has millions of followers on both TikTok and YouTube, and he was making six figures a year in brand deals.

There was just one trip when we went to Disney that I noticed they were looking for the camera and what to say and they're enjoying it. But then they would constantly look over to see if I'm recording or if I'm taking a picture. I was just like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? And that was it. They're just like, just stop since we've stopped. I asked how much he's made since he took his kids offline he said zero wow yeah uh and what did he say about that massive loss of income is it worth it I mean he yeah it was interesting because he always kept a full-time job which is not usually what happens with influencer families so I think he felt less

kind of beholden to that income. But he said that once he realized what he was doing, and these are his words, like being part of that exploitation, he was like, once you realize what you're doing and the dangers of it, it could have been a million dollars. I don't care. I feel like I have to ask about the darker corners of the internet here because I imagine that's where some people's heads are probably going. There can be really dangerous and exploitative spaces, of course. And so do we know anything about where some of this content is ending up? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you read that New York Times article that was like the marketplace of influencer girls managed by moms and stalked by men. But that was I mean, it was basically everyone's like worst fear about what this content is being used for,

basically everyone's like worst fear about what this content is being used for, like come to life. And they were able to do some really incredible research into finding out like what kind of followers, like what kind of people are following these accounts of, of young girls specifically. And yeah, it is really worrisome. And I think you don't want to be an alarmist, but at the same time, like it is true that, you know, a lot of men are following these accounts. A lot of grown men are following these accounts and they're really glad for this plethora of content. Yeah. I saw in your piece, like some moms say that they're kind of changing the way that they're shooting their kids. So not in their diapers or I guess not like in a dance uniform, but. Yeah. Not swimming and stuff like that. Yeah. I imagine that doesn't

make that all go away though. We've started this conversation by talking about the young woman who was part of the first generation of online kids. But, you know, obviously things have really exploded now. We're in kind of more of Wild West territory with TikTok. And so, you know, as this new generation of kids grows up online, you know, what kind of conversations and reckonings do you think that we will have in another 20 years? Oh, well, I think that we're going to look back at this time 20 years from now and think I cannot believe how unregulated this industry was. And I think people do that with child actors.

They look back at the time before child actor laws and they think, I can't believe we let that happen. And even with child actor laws, you see how difficult it is for many child actors to come out of that lifestyle. And so I think we're going to look back on this and just think, how did we let this go so far? Okay. Forteza, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

Thank you. Daddy bit me.