Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Mom-fluencers: Should Family Be Monetized?

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Influencing can be a lucrative and worthwhile venture, but in the case of mom-fluencers, it gets a little more complicated. Parenting content can be educational, aspirational and empowering. But what happens when your kid becomes a stream of income?  Nicole talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly of mom-fluencers with Jo Piazza, author and host of the amazing podcast that covers this industry, Under the Influence.  To listen to Jo’s stellar podcast Under the Influence, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-influence-with-jo-piazza/id1544171101 For Jo’s other work, check out her website: https://www.jopiazza.com/ 

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that

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Hey guys, are you ready for some money rehab? Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player game stop and should i have a 401k because you don't do it no i know you think the whole world revolves around you and your money well it doesn't charge for wasting our time i will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. As you know, if you've been listening for a while, I don't have any children.

Yet. But I do want to be a parent someday. And because I am such a dork about everything, even motherhood, I've been doing a lot of research on parenting. And it's been super interesting. I've noticed that whenever I look up a parenting question online, I get slammed with suggestions for tons and tons and tons of mommy blogs. So I've gone down the momfluencer rabbit hole and I have some questions. I've talked before on the show about how influencing can be a lucrative venture, but in the case of momfluencers,

it gets a little bit more complicated because, of course, kids are involved. Does learning about motherhood by watching other moms on Instagram fill some sort of ancestral tribal need to learn by example? Does it negatively affect your parenting when your family becomes an income stream? Can both be true? I wanted to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of this space, so I called up Joe Piazza, author and host of the amazing podcast Under the Influence that covers this industry. Joe, I'm so excited to have you. Welcome to Money Rehab.

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. I am in awe of you. You host and write the most amazing podcast, Under the Influence, which if people are not listening, they should be. It's a deep dive into the mom internet and all the things mom influencers. How did you first get into this space? Oh my gosh, it was the most random thing. I've been a reporter my whole life. And I think that the way that I've always made sense of the world when I don't understand it is reporting it. And

after I had my second baby, she didn't sleep. She didn't sleep at all. And so I had her just latched to me all the time, all through the night. And that was the only time she was calm. So the only appendage I had free was my right thumb. And the only thing you can do with the right thumb is scroll Instagram. And so for the first time in my life, I was scrolling Instagram a lot. I'd never been like a real social media person and, or just kind of mindlessly scrolling. And because the tech companies knew more about my uterus and me having a baby than I did, probably, they knew that I had a newborn and I was served mom content like just up the wazoo. So it was everything that I was

scrolling through was all these beautiful moms with beautiful babies who clearly slept and who were not peeing on them all the time and who just seemed really, really nice and perfect. And all of them were trying to sell me stuff to make me a better mother. And at that moment, I was like, whoa, this is big business. I'd heard about influencing before. I'd worked with influencers for different media organizations that I'd been at, but I'd never been sold to this much. So I pitched under the influence as this deep dive, but also kind of an expose of the mom influencing world. I said, I want to uncover what's behind these gorgeous pictures. And I really thought that I would find scandal and intrigue. And I did a little bit. But more than that, I found a business. I found a multi-billion dollar industry

that is created by women and consumed by women that is largely ignored by the mainstream media, probably because it is created and consumed by women, to our peril because these influencers are controlling more eyeballs these days than most major cable networks or major newspapers. And that's how Under the Influence evolved. I still have a very critical eye towards the influencer space and particularly towards the tech companies that run the platforms. But I've also become kind of an advocate for these women because they're entrepreneurs, they're creators. They formed their own businesses that they can run and make so much money at while raising their children in a world that is not kind to women who just want the

flexibility to be able to somewhat care give in their life. So really, I mean, they're doing what a lot of us wish that we could do, who have been trapped in corporate America for so long and have been unable to care give the way that we would like to. The world was so rich that I just couldn't stop reporting on it. And then there had to be a second season. It's so juicy. Yes. And if you're following that money trail, of course, you found this massive industry of mompreneurs, mom influencers, whatever you want to call them. How much money are we talking about here? You're saying that they're mom entrepreneurs and making a ton of money. What's a ton of money? So it ranges, obviously. There's women that are still

working for free products. And that's a whole different story. I don't think that there's any industry on the planet where men have accepted free diapers or free lipstick in return for work. But there are still women that are doing this just for the exposure, just because it is fun for them. And then there's women who are making good supplemental income. They're making a few hundred dollars up to a thousand dollars a month. It helps pay for whatever child care they do have outside the home,

pays for things like groceries. But then we're looking at women for whom this is a serious career. We're looking at six figures and up. I talked to so many women who have completely quit their corporate jobs from being lawyers to marketing executives to magazine executives to do this full time. And not only that, their husbands are quitting their full time jobs to support their wife's business. are quitting their full-time jobs to support their wife's business. So we're looking at anywhere from $100,000 up to the much higher six figures. And then, of course, there's a handful of influencer millionaires out there who are making, and I'm not saying millionaire in terms of the formal

definition, but people who are making around a million dollars a year. And I just want to pause for a moment here because you mentioned dads. There's obviously this whole industry and this whole term, momfluencing, I guess that's how you say it. Why do you think there's no comparable industry for dads? Well, because culturally, we have never been set up to see this kind of labor, this kind of work as something that men do. It is getting slightly better, but we are far, far from parity and equity at this point. Also, the consumers of content about parenting do tend to be female. Again, that is a cultural issue. There are dad influencers. It's a different ballgame. The same amount of money isn't there. The same number of followers and traffic isn't there.

And you also don't see the kind of perfection that we see in the mom influencing space. A lot of mom influencer accounts, what I started to do once I broke this down as a business is think about them as magazines. Like think about them as independent media companies, because that's how people consume them now. We don't read print magazines, except for me. I still read five. I still read five different print magazines a month, but I know that I'm in the minority. And that, but that's how we consume it.

People scroll through Instagram the same way you used to flip through the pages of Vogue. how we consume it. People scroll through Instagram the same way you used to flip through the pages of Vogue. And so a lot of these influencers do have very beautiful, very highly curated content. A lot of dad influencers are just like the schlubby dads on TV that you see. And there's just, there's no, there's no manicuring. There is no staging. It's like what you see is what you get. Think the followers see the accounts or the sort of digital magazines as aspirational and educational? Or do you feel like these accounts are unattainable?

And if it's the latter, what is the appeal of obsessing over a life that's never actually going to look like your own? Well, I think that there's a lot of appeal of obsessing over a life that's never going to look like your own. That's the reason that we have read magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Travel and Leisure. It's why we consume so much content about beautiful celebrity houses and vacations and cars. And aspiration has been at the forefront of consumer culture since consumer culture began. forefront of consumer culture since consumer culture began. I mean, we kind of have always looked to the class ahead of us to see what we want to buy in order to aspire to that next class.

So I think a lot of people do look at it as aspirational, as escapist. The problem here, and I do think that it is a problem, is that I look at it like media. I look at it like a magazine. It doesn't bother me anymore that it's so highly curated and beautiful and perfect looking. I do not think the average consumer looks at it like that. So I think because Instagram is created in such a way that it does feel social, that these people, their pictures are on a device that lives in your pocket that is attached to your body for so much of the day. That makes them feel much closer to you than, say, the celebrities who have been in ads and

magazine stories for so long. And so they sort of seem like your friend. And when your friend is trying to sell something to you, particularly something you can't afford or something that doesn't turn out to be great, you feel a lot worse at the end of the day than you would if you bought that smart water because Jennifer Aniston's on the billboard and you didn't really like it. Yeah, it's a really good point because you're looking at this as a professional and, you know, moms who've just had a baby or maybe going through postpartum might not feel the same distinction. So it's kind of a mixed bag, it sounds like here. You've made the point that moms have been commodified, but there's also a difference now that moms are actually making a bunch of money and so it's

awesome that this is an industry where women are making more money than men that's a good and empowering overwhelmingly positive part but then there are also some ethical considerations that you note on the show that you're putting your kids online and your children are basically becoming an income stream so would you say that the opportunities presented by momfluencing do more good than harm or the reverse? I do think that they do more good than harm. I have to say that any industry that allows women to make money while supporting their family, while taking care of their family, allows them to become entrepreneurs, to create their own schedules, and allows women to take advantage of the commodification of mothers that has been happening since the beginning of mass

media, that is a good thing. All of that said, there's no regulation of this industry. And when there's no regulation, there are a lot of moral and ethical problems. My biggest issue is really the children. It's the kids that have no say whatsoever in how they're being used in the creation of content. And that's something that we're all figuring out. It's not just mom entrepreneurs and influencers who have to grapple with that problem. From the second that we have that first sonogram of our

very first baby, we have to think about whether or not we're going to put their image on social media, which is a public forum through which anyone can do anything with that image and information in perpetuity. And that's not talked about nearly enough. Things get hairier when the mother or the parent is then making money off of that image, and the child's privacy is at stake, and they're also being made to work. They're being made to pose in photo and video shoots. Video is so much more common and frankly necessary now to any influencer's career. And that is time away from play, from school, from being a normal kid. And we don't know what the impact of children or on children is going to be in the future. All of this research, everything that I learned

doing the first season of the podcast made me mostly wipe my kids' pictures off of my Instagram. They show up sometimes in stories, or you'll see the back of their heads, but they're not on my main feed anymore, because I just learned too much about what predators can do with your child's image. Let's double click on that, so to speak, for a second. What can they do? Well, think about it and think about the normal. There's just a regular pregnancy announcement or birth announcement. So a lot of people, I don't want to say most, but most people I know, a baby's born and you do the birth announcement. You say the exact date they were born. You give their full name, often including their middle name.

Your address is very easy to find if someone knows your full name. There's now a whole data set out there about your child that can easily, easily be co-opted by people looking to commit digital and credit fraud throughout the entire world. Then there's the question of the images. We've seen a lot of cases where these images are being stolen and co-opted for things that are incredibly disturbing. Some of the pictures, especially pictures of kids in baths or pictures of kids, you know, running with their little naked booties through a sprinkler, things that we think are cute and innocuous end up on pedophilia websites. Beyond that, there's also some other strange dark corners of the internet. We did a whole episode this season on social media role-playing, which is where people

will co-opt photos of you, your family, and your children and pretend that they're you in strange internet games. And all of it was just too much. It all felt like a weird sci-fi, very dark horror movie. And I say all the time too, I get a lot out of social media. I do enjoy it. But there's times when I wish it weren't such a big part of our lives. I also write books. And the number one way that I get news about my books out there is through social media these days. And I mean, I will sell more books through posting things on my Instagram than I will from major mainstream magazines writing about it. So I can't get off Instagram, but I can protect my kids on it. And I think we all kind of have to think about what limits we need to put on ourselves in order to feel good about using it. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money rehab will be right back.

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from

buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Orp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. Now for some more money rehab. Yeah, those are some scary internet rabbit holes you've gone down. I mean, I found a site that was devoted to people's feet.

And I had like a wiki feet site that I discovered. So that was the craziest thing. I can only imagine butts in sprinklers being another whole thing. Baby butts. Just like adorable. I mean, I love a baby butt. Like adorable. Who doesn't?

I know. Adorable, squishy, delicious, rolly butt. Squishy, delicious, rolly butts. Just like adorable. I mean, I love a baby butt. Like adorable. Who doesn't? I know. Adorable, squishy, delicious, rolly butts. But I'll bet you that could be taken out of context somewhere. But it is terrifying where these images can end up. And just every time that I post something of my kids now, I think about the worst case scenario, which isn't pleasant, but it's kind of what I needed to do to curtail posting them on there. Are there any written or unwritten rules, I guess, for what people can, can't, or should, shouldn't post about their kids? I think it's all your personal comfort zone.

The big thing that I think people need to do is just be a little more educated and mindful with all of our social media use and to think about the privacy that we want for both ourselves and for the rest of our family and the privacy that we need. Because I think that there is often an inherent trust in tech companies and large corporations to think, oh, well, no, they won't let anything bad to me or anything bad happen to me. And that's absolutely not true. If we've discovered anything in our reporting, it's that there's absolutely no protections in place for the average citizen on Instagram or for the creator who is frankly making Instagram a lot

of money by creating so much content and giving them so many places to serve their ads. There's just there's really no rules, no protections. And the ones that are there are not being enforced or followed. So in your research, what have you found about how kids of momfluencers are affected? you found about how kids of momfluencers are affected? I know that story is still to be written, but oh my God, have I now seen this a couple times where little kids are taking pictures, I live by the beach, of their moms in bathing suits? And it's just the most heartbreaking, horrifying thing to witness. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. It is. I know that there's already an Instagram account like this, but I think about it every time I see an influencer in the wild taking photos. That's one of my favorite ones. Or where their husbands are

taking their photos. And I'm just like, one of my friend's wives is an influencer and she's very good and her account is great. But I think about my friend all the time when I look at her account because I went to college with him and I love him and I just think about him taking all these photos and then we laugh. And then we're like, oh, oh. She's an Instagram husband. He's an Instagram husband. That's part of his job description now. And he went to college probably.

He went to college with me. He went to college with me. He went to college with me. And then I just like picture him taking these sunset influencer photos. And I'm like, you know what? He is married to a great lady. So God bless. God bless all of them. But I think it's really everyone's personal comfort zone for how and what they want to post.

But what we do know is that the early research, and there's not a ton, right? Because influencing is new. We have to remember that Instagram is not that old, that the rise of the influencer really only happened in the past five years, even though we've been seeing mom bloggers for about 15 years. Because we've been seeing mom bloggers longer, there are now adult children of mom bloggers who have spoken out, many of them anonymously to say that they felt like their childhood was stolen by their mom's writing about their childhood, that they felt like they were constantly performing and that they had no privacy. We also now hear from some older

children of mom influencers who say, don't take my picture, or I don't feel comfortable in front of the camera. And I don't know why you won't listen to me or give me any agency over my own body. And that just creates such a schism in the parent-child relationship. And also the concept of making a child perform all the time, the closest comparison that we have to it are child stars in Hollywood, which is an industry that is very well regulated. And yet we still see the majority of child stars not doing very well as adults. And so I think there have to be a lot more regulations around how children's images are used on social media. What would you suggest if you were in charge of the world, which I would vote for as far as regulations? I would love being in charge of the world, which I would vote for as far as regulations.

I love being in charge of the world. You know, I would honestly vote for a complete ban on children until a certain age of consent. That would never happen. That said, France does severely limit what images parents are allowed to post of their children, or they did. They were passing a series of laws, and I haven't checked in in a while to see where they're at with it. But there was definitely a heavier regulation about what you could post without a child's consent. And then you have to think about what is the age of consent. A lot of children have smartphones now at age seven or eight or even younger. I mean, I would love to not give my

child a smartphone until they had a car. And maybe at that point, they'll be self-driving cars. They won't even need a phone. There'll be something in the car that they can call me from. But I also think that we need to limit how children are working. So if you're making money off of your children's images, if there is something linked to your recorded income on your federal tax returns that is profiting off of your child's image, there should be some kind of law in place that at least reserves some of that money for the use of a child. And there's laws in place in Hollywood for that. So it says if you're your child's manager and you're managing their income, then that money needs to be put in an account that the child can access when they're 18. Because this is a labor question. These children are indeed working. Some of them are at photo shoots all day long and video shoots all day long. And if a parent is profiting, what we hope is that that is going to care for their children, obviously. And I think there should be ways of regulating

how much children have to do in terms of labor on social media accounts, because media accounts are now the same as TV or movies. They really are. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. Doing business with family can be difficult, and it's even more complicated when kids are involved. If you're making money from social media partnerships, I'm not mad at you. You get that cash. But just consistently check in with yourself to make sure that you're acting in the best interest of your kids. I'm not saying that if you start promoting diapers on Instagram, you're going to turn into a Disney villain. But it is easy to lose a little bit of perspective on things once money is involved. If you're going to go in this space, I'd recommend allocating a percentage of that

stream of income to go to a savings account for your kiddos. I know it might seem a little funny to treat your child like a business partner, but setting a precedent that your kids are directly benefiting from these partnerships too will help you keep the right perspective. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson.

Our mascots are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to OG Money Rehab team Michelle Lanz for her development work, Catherine Law for her production and writing magic, and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering, and sound design. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.