Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Truth About Child Influencing

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

 Family vlogs are a huge category of online content. At their best, they show real parenting and the entertaining and relatable moments of family life. However, the content category has been plagued by accusations of child exploitation and new laws targeting creators claiming to protect children. Fortesa Latifi covers the space in-depth and joins Taylor to set the record straight.

And people felt like she made this monetized content about this adopted child who had behavioral issues and then got rid of her. Family vlogs are a huge category of online content right now. At their best, they show real parenting and are entertaining and relatable moments of the joys and difficulties of family life. But in recent years, there's been a big backlash. Some viewers accuse family vloggers of child exploitation, and there's been a spate of somewhat dubious laws claiming to protect kids who appear in. these videos. Fortessa Latifi is the primary journalist covering this space. She's written about it for outlets like The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and Cosmopolitan. Fortessa, welcome to Power User. Thanks for having me. So tell me how you got started covering this whole family vlogger industry and

the child content creator world. I've thought about this a lot and I just like got really interested. You know how as a journalist you just kind of get like obsessed with things and you're just like can't stop thinking about it. And I think it's because I grew up in the time of like 16 and pregnant and teen mom and that kind of stuff. And I saw all of these kids have their entire lives put online even from the time that they were like, you know, literally in the womb. And then I kind of saw that like replicating itself with these influencer kids. And I was just like, what a fascinating industry and world that I feel like no one has really tapped into. I know. I feel like you've really made it your beat. Ironically, no one else has really covered it, I feel like, in the way that you have.

So tell me a little bit about the child influencer landscape because I want people to really understand who don't see these videos like the difference between a family vlogger, a 16 year old unboxer. What does the sort of under 18 child content landscape look like online right now today? I mean, as you know, there are so many different kinds of child influencers. But like for the family vloggers, it's usually a mom and a dad. It's often that like, you know, picture perfect family of like the mom and the dad. and there's often like a lot of kids, that's kind of a thing with family vloggers that they have like five plus kids. I think just because it like makes it more interesting and also because a lot of them are Mormon and Mormons tend to have more kids. But with family vloggers, the content is really focused on the kids.

So I think that's the difference between being like the child of a mom influencer and being the child of a family vlogger is that a mom influencer is more focused on her experience of motherhood. Whereas a family vlogger is more focused on like my kids. broke their arm today, come with us to the emergency room, or my kid has their first crush or their first period. Like, it's very focused on the experience of the children and they are the stars versus, like, the mom being the star. So it's interesting because I think a lot of times people will talk about these family vloggers and they don't talk about the parents, they talk about the kids. Like, they're not like, I love the mom. They're like, I love the kid. I think it's really important to distinguish family vloggers from sort of the broader child content

industry because of course the majority of child influencers are kids putting themselves online. They're kids over the age of 13, usually teenagers, that aspire to be influencers or like to express themselves through video content. We also have a lot of young kids that are using Instagram or YouTube with parental approval that are maybe putting themselves out there. I was thinking of Timothy Shalame's channel where he was reviewing like video game console things and you don't even see his face. It was good YouTube. It's Sismotic Control on 360 with the controller of the week. To me, all of that is fine. And yes, kids are putting themselves on the internet, but I think as long as parents are overseeing them, and even if they're monetizing, it's responsible if they are allowed to sort of

quit and do whatever they want. Then we have the family vlogger industry. And that's really what I want to drill down on, because I think it is a completely different kind of world. Who are the main family vloggers? Like when we talk about the family vlogging world, what families are we talking about? Who are the big players in the space? One of the biggest players are the LeBrant family. to the LeBrant family vlogs. Our family situation, our family dynamic, it's a lot different than most people. It's interesting also because a lot of these families often have this kind of like Cinderella story beginning. So with the LeBrant family, they have I think probably over 10

million subscribers on YouTube. They have tens of millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok and Savannah was a teen mom and then she met Cole who actually was famous in his own right on Vine. He was part of Dem White Boys. Do you remember them? Yes. It was a collab group. Yeah, and they were just like mega viral on Vine and like famous. So he was like 19 years old and was this like Vine star and she was this Instagram star and she had a child and he accepted her and they're very religious and now they have like five children total. Okay, so we have the Lebrantz. Who are some other big names in this space and what sort of content do they produce? So let's see. I just interviewed for my book, I interviewed the Family Fun Pack and they do a lot of like prank kind of stuff and skits and come with us as we get ready with our eight kids or however many kids they have like it's very much like day in the life kind of stuff i've had a kid who

hit in the corner to poop over and over and over and we might have thought she was doing it on perfect i guess you'll know who it was and where are most of these people located yeah good question mostly i would say the hot spots are utah and weirdly tennessee how much money are these people making I mean, is this like a full-time thing? How lucrative is this world? No one that I have talked to who is a family vlogger has a job outside of vlogging. Like, this is their job. And they make so much more money than you and I do.

Like, they make millions of dollars a year. This is extremely lucrative. Yeah, I think part of the reason the family vlogging industry is so lucrative is because they make family-friendly content generally. And there's a lot of brands out there that want to appeal to families. We also have a lot of family bloggers sort of starting putting their own brands. feel like lately in the past couple years, though, there's been a reckoning and there's been a big backlash where you see a lot of sort of anger online about this industry. I think that the pivotal

moment in all of this was back around 2017, 2018, especially with the TidePod challenge, you had some family vloggers pretending to subject their children to actually eating Tidepods. There was a lot of, like, I mean, this was peak YouTube prank culture. And I feel like the families that embraced that prank culture started to receive a lot of backlash and it started to put a spotlight on this industry where people were like, okay, wait a minute. Yeah, what are we doing? Should we apply? Yeah, like the dynamics and norms of the online content world of Logan Paul, etc. to a family landscape. And then you saw the rise of TikTok. And I feel like when family vlogging was big on YouTube, it exploded on TikTok. You suddenly saw so many people, especially in, as you mentioned, places like Utah with Mormons and teen moms making content specifically around their children, often making fun of their children. And as you mentioned, also, that's when a lot of norms started to change. Tell me about Mika Stauffer and the backlash she received because I feel like she was one of the first to

receive backlash in this TikTok era. So this was a huge deal when this happened. So she was a mom vlogger and she had a ton of subscribers on YouTube. She made this super family friendly content. And then she was talking about like how, you know, the way that they talk about it, adoption is in my heart and I'm being called to this, whatever. So they adopted a child from China, I believe. And his name was Huxley. Well, they named him Huxley, which is like the most family vlogger name also.

And they were making content all around like his adoption and getting him used to the family and whatever. And then slowly he started kind of like disappearing from. their content and people were like wait what happened and it turned out meika made this like tearful video where she said he had issues that we couldn't take care of after multiple assessments after multiple evaluations numerous medical professionals have felt that he needed a different fit in his medical needs and people felt like she made this monetized content about this adopted child who had behavioral issues and then got rid of him and this was all how happening in 2020. Also, I feel like when everybody was getting a lot more online, suddenly the

content creator industry was breaking through to the mainstream. And I feel like it put just this bigger spotlight on everything. There was so much discussion of this on TikTok. I feel like it was like my whole for you page for months. But yet at the same time that you're seeing all this backlash, you're also seeing more and more families get into this space. Why is this space so appealing? Like why do people keep even despite all of this hate that they get online and backlash? Why do people keep going into it. Is it just the money? I think so. I think so. I mean, I think that the money is unbelievable. Like the people that I've talked to who have told me how much money they make, like it's millions of dollars a year. It's incredible. There's also a lot. I feel like there's also the fame

aspect. And I feel like, I mean, we have to acknowledge that there are also millions and millions of people who love this content. And a lot of those people are children themselves. A lot of kids that I spoke to at this YouTube camp, they love watching family vlogs. Like they feel a personal deep connection with these children on screen. And I feel like there is some value in kids being able to watch other kids or at least see a family life on screen, even if it's an idealized one. I think so too. And I think the fans, that's something that really surprised me in the research for my book. I've been talking to hundreds of fans. And a lot of them are really young. Like the ages that people told me that they were most fervently kind of part of the family vlog fandom is

usually between like 10 and 14. So it is like young people. And a lot of times it was like really sad. A lot of times it's people who don't have great family lives themselves. And so they want to watch these idealized versions of family life. And I think it's very natural to like want to look for that. I know. I feel like I find myself watching stuff as well. Like I don't know. There's some of these people just produce this content that is such an idealized life. And you're like, gosh, I wish I could be that mother with all the perfect kids, right? I mean, I think when we think family vlog we think of the Daddy O'Fives and the pranking their own children, rating their report cards, but a lot of it is aspirational.

It is aspirational. And it's interesting because, like, as a new mom myself, even as someone who studies this and writes about this, like, I watch the content and I am like, wait, why am I not an address baking sourdough bread while I, like, also breastfeed at the same time and look really beautiful? Like, it does get to you. Like, even when you know better, it gets to you. Yeah, and it feels like it sort of coincides with the rise of all of the.

this trad wife content where we're promoting these like quote unquote traditional family values. I mean, these are almost exclusively straight cisgender, usually white families. And it's super religious most of the time, super and Christian and Mormon, you know. But of course now we are seeing people that grow up in the system sort of critique it. I think we saw, you know, with the rise of mommy blogging back in the 2000s, we saw a lot of mommy bloggers write as you mentioned more about their own experience. They mention their children. Sometimes they didn't even mention their kids by name. Often those blogs didn't even include photos. Then when things moved into the visual space,

I think people really started to get to know these kids. Now, I feel like there's this universal idea that like, wow, every kid hates this. I can't wait. As you mentioned, it's like, I can't wait until these kids speak out for themselves. From what I have heard from a lot of these kids, it's a very mixed bag. Can you kind of talk about it? Because I feel like we have a lot of kids that go on to, you know, enter the entertainment industry or make a lot of money and kind of kind of fade into, you know, irrelevance. And then we have kids that are very angry about the ways that their childhood was portrayed. So talk about how these kids in these vlogs are feeling. Yeah, I think that's a really good point and something that I've really tried to stress in my

reporting is that it's not that every family vlogger kid hates their parents and hates having grown up online and thinks that their parents are evil for having done this. That's just not the truth. And I think people who critique the industry almost want that to be the truth. Like, they want it to be a blanket statement that like if you put your kid online, you are evil. And like, I don't believe that anything is that black and white. And like, I've talked to family vlogger kids for my book. And I've talked to them. And they are like, I love being on YouTube.

And I want to be a YouTuber on my own. And I'm starting my own channel. And I make money this way. And I love having fans. And there are also kids that I've talked to for my book who are like, yeah, I hated this. And my mom and my dad totally took my privacy away from me. And I think that like both of those experience. are valid and we need to listen to both. We can't just say every family vlogger kid hates that because

that's not the truth. It's just not the truth. And I feel like it feeds into these stereotypes where people often, I feel like use these family vlogs, even the most responsible ones to hate on the mother, you know, even when sometimes it's the dad that's actually running the show, right? So much of the vitriol towards family vloggers feels like mom shaming or, you know, you evil witch. Like, how dare you put your child online, even when that child grows up and it's like, actually had a great experience. And now I have a huge platform and I was able to pay for college. I bought my own house. And I'm a TikToker. I'm a TikToker. I like this world. Like I was excited to be in these videos, you know, like it. It sort of reminds me of just like kids generally growing up, right? Like some kids love the way they

were parented. Some kids hate the way they were parented. Some kids have deep resentment about their childhood. Some kids love it. It doesn't seem so black and white. And I feel like a lot of the content online made about this industry is black and white. So tell me about this sort of cottage content creator industry that exists to kind of critique family vlogging. Because I feel like especially since 2020, we've seen the rise, especially on TikTok, of these influencers are sort of like anti-family vlogging influencers. Talk to me about what that looks like. Yeah, I mean, there are entire creators with hundreds of thousands of followers or subscribers on YouTube who totally exist just to critique the family vlogging industry and they'll stitch the content or they'll record it and show it and just, you know, there are

all their content is just look how evil these parents are and like look what's wrong with this. And it's very black and white like we said. Like it's very if you show your kids, you are wrong. And I, I just think that level of there's no nuance. And first of all, you're not going to change anyone's mind that way because that's not how you change someone's mind is telling them like you're evil. And second of all, I just don't think it's true. But it's just fascinating that like there's the family vlogging industry. And now there's this tiny little, there's the, I mean, not even tiny. Now there's this little cottage industry of creators who totally exist just to basically talk badly about those people. But it's interesting to me because it's like your entire platform is based on

those people existing. And it's kind of like I have this story coming out on snark subreddits, which is this whole other thing. But it's kind of like this idea of like you're not a fan, but you're also like you're kind of an anti fan because you're still creating content around them. Yeah, snark subreddits, and we did an episode on them previously, but there's these subreddits where people sort of go and coalesce generally to hate on very specific influencers. And I think you're 100% right. I've noticed this a lot with the family vlogging world where it's like these hate watchers and these people that want to tear these other families down are so aggressive and they're often surfacing the most problematic content to a much wider audience than would have even previously seen it and sort of doubly harming the kids in it by like amplifying this. content, like, or the worst of it. I mean, they also just, like, pick apart absolutely everything. Like, it reminds me of those, like, body language experts that they get on the, like, shady

courtroom, you know, dramas where it's like, look at her. I can tell she's miserable. Look at the pain in her eyes. Look at this. And it's like, you watch the clip and you're like, I don't see any of that. It looks like a completely straightforward video about, you know, a kid learning how to play soccer or something. It's incredibly reactionary. And I feel like we've really seen the rise of this in the past year and a half. And it scares me. It is these people that it like they're basically, it's like that children should not be seen. They should not be heard. We should protect children. They have absolutely no agency. They have absolutely no right to speech. You know, like it is parents should never allow them to be online. That's inherently abusive or

exploitative. And in sort of the wake of all of this, we've seen these state laws come up. And we've seen a lot of state legislation in places like Maryland and Washington and others. I think Illinois actually even passed maybe one of these laws aimed at quote unquote protecting child influencers. Talk to me about where this legislation is coming from and who is pushing it. Yeah. So I think there have been three states that have passed laws related to child influencers. So Illinois was first, Minnesota was second, and California was third. Illinois and California only deal with the monetary effects of child influencers. So basically what it says is if you appear in this percentage of monetized content, then you,

you are entitled to 15% of the earnings and it's put in a trust until you turn 18, which I think is like completely reasonable. And like we said, like we have those protections for child actors, not in every state actually, which I think is fascinating because people think that we do, but not in every state. But I think that totally makes sense because I've talked to child influencers who work their entire adolescence and childhood and then they reach the age of 18. There's not a dollar put aside for them. And that's just, that's just not fair. That, you know, influencing is labor. It is labor. The only law that I know that has privacy protections is the Minnesota law, and it has that stipulation that you can request for content to be deleted.

And I think what's interesting to me about that is I'm not sure how it would actually work. Like you request that of Instagram and then Instagram has to make that decision. Like I just, I think it's coming from a good place. Like, in a way. I don't think it's coming from a good place. I think there's a reason all of these right wing groups are pushing this stuff. I think there's a reason certain far right. law firms are representing certain child influencers. Also, I think it's important to note, by the way,

that these laws are not necessarily being pushed by child influencers themselves. It's a lot of, like, quote, unquote, concerned adults, some of whom it seems like have kind of a regressive ideology. And I don't believe that their true interest in this law is the child influencers. What do you think they're true interests is? I think they're true in censoring speech. But I think when you have a lot of these people that have never shown a single bit of interest in the child influencer world, suddenly sort of like using them as a cudgel to push legislation that they have tried to get pushed for a while because their whole goal is to dismantle free speech and the media and the media's ability to cover events and also dismantle young people's agency,

right? Like we are seeing these laws coincide in a lot of even the same states with laws that seek to ban young people from using social media under the age of 16 or in certain cases they want to raise it to 18. We're seeing it also in the context of this broader moral panic about kids and that removes kids agency and removes a lot of young people's agency, especially marginalized young people that maybe want to go online and create content about LGBTQ issues or create community or seek information themselves about things that maybe their parents wouldn't approve of. And I just think it's impossible to look at the rise of these laws outside of that broader context, especially when you have the same sort of figures pushing that stuff and think, oh,

this is all in the interest of child influencers. Because again, it's not child influencers. it's not children involved in these family vlogs that are testifying at a lot of this stuff. I think there are some, but some of it seems to be. Sherry Frankie and Utah. Right. Yes, the Utah one. But they've also roped in a lot of people who are just average kids that grew up with their parents oversharing on social media and weren't influencers, right?

I guess my question for you is like, let's talk about like the Minnesota law specifically where it has that clause where you can request the deletion of content once you turn 18. I guess what would be your issue with that? What would be the issue of that is that is immediately used to censor legitimate speech, like legitimate news coverage, like in a lot of countries that do not have the speech protections that we have, for instance, the UAE or others, there are these legal precedents where somebody can say, this is defamatory of me, I want this taken down. That is used to take down a lot of accountability reporting.

That is used to take down a lot of really important news coverage. You know, when people are covering things like student protests or whatever, like children, especially teenagers exist in the world they have the right to speech themselves. And it is very easy and every single civil liberties group can tell you an litany of reasons that I'm not going to be able to articulate for them very well why these laws are dangerous. Because they set this kind of scary legal precedent that again is antithetical to protecting our civil liberties. And they're sort of pushing it under the guise of protect the children when it's not even clear that that stuff would protect the children. So the worry is that it would be expanded.

No, the worry is that it would be enforced as it is now. If it was enforced as it is now, it could be used to, it could be used in very nefarious ways. And this is why civil liberties groups have raised this alarm. And again, you can't just look at this portion of these laws without looking at the broader context of, especially in some of these exact same states, seeking to raise the age of social media, seeking to keep kids off the internet. What groups are pushing those? It's the same sort of paternalistic, far right groups that want to remove young people voices from the internet. They want to, you know, dismantle speech online. They want to strip civil liberties online. That's very nefarious. And a lot of the coverage, I feel like, of these laws, don't

put them in that broader context. And they sort of push this moral panic about kid influencers, which, by the way, there are really bad labor conditions in some of these like family vlogs. And we should absolutely protect kids against that. But we don't want to do that in a way that potentially endangers our civil liberties. Yeah, I hear you. I guess the worry is that if a mom or a dad makes content that is really embarrassing, which they do, like content about someone's first period or their first crush or their first breakup. And then the kid reaches the age of 18. Like I guess there, I do think, and I don't know that these laws are the exact right way to do it, but I do definitely not because for Tessa, parents do a lot of really embarrassing,

terrible things to their children, which is horrible, but dismantling the entire public sort of like civil liberties on the internet in order to theoretically protect against it when we know how laws that strip people of civil liberties are ultimately enforced, I just think it is the complete wrong way to go about it. I think the way to go about it is by changing norms, by making this type of stuff unacceptable, by making it so that brands are not doing those types of sponsored content campaigns, right? There are ways to change norms and behaviors that don't have to do with restricting all of our speech and suddenly making it so that, like, journalistic content will be removed or that young people don't have their own voice on the internet. I definitely don't think we

should like limit kids from like being on the internet. And I don't think like people and my comments are always like, look at Australia's limiting kids from being on the internet until they're 16. And like I don't think that that like that's, that's scary to me. Yeah. But do you think we have to again look at why these groups are all intertwined and why these laws are all intertwined. And I think we need to change the system, but we need to change the system in a responsible way. And this goes to the same thing of like these, as you mentioned, these social media companies harm. Do these social media companies do a lot of harm? Yes. Should they, you know, fix their algorithms and systems to be healthier for kids and, you know, to use when they're young? Sure. But does

that mean that we want to ban all young kids from using the internet and put young LGBTQ kids in harm? Of course not, right? Like we've done separate episodes on these sort of laws, but I think we need to look at it in this broader sort of like moral panic around kids and technology and try to change the norms. Because I feel like it's also like you're asking them these young people to like sue their own parents. Like a lot of them, they're not going to have their resources. Like the people that are going to use this laws are the terrible fascist groups that like have the resources to sue, you know, dozens and dozens of YouTube channels to get content taken down or to get speech taken down. Like some like traumatized, you know, 19 year old is likely not going to be able to have those

resources. And I think we could fix this problem a lot more effectively if we had these more nuanced conversations around family vlogging and change the norms. Again, why is it normal in America to make sponsored content about your 12 year old's first period? Yeah. And I mean, I also think there needs to be the question of why are there so many millions of followers and subscribers and fans because this doesn't exist in a vacuum, right? And it wouldn't exist if people weren't so into it. Yeah. And I think that that goes back to like what kids are looking for because kids are such consumers of this media. I think there's also like that doesn't mean that we should we need to have like organic family vlogging. I wrote about this company Allen's universe recently, which makes kids

content on YouTube. Alan is a guy in his 20s. He makes content that sort of appeals to kids. It's mostly like school-based and classroom-based. There are other platforms also like Brat TV, which hires child actors, pays them fair wages, right? To produce shows like chicken girls about these two kids and their babysitter and their family life or whatever. Ironically, I think a child of a family vlogger starred in one of those shows. But it's produced responsibly.

The kids are, they understand that they're on set. Like, kids can watch these shows and get the almost the experience of consuming a family vlog without, I guess, like the kid themselves having to have their actual life experience commoditized. And again, not to say that all kids don't want to be in family vlogs, but yeah, some of them really do. And I think they should have that autonomy, I guess. It's just so hard to know, you know, I feel like this just goes back to like childhood of like, God, sometimes your parents do a lot of mortifying things. Sometimes you change your mind. Sometimes what you loved at age 13 is not what you love at age 18, you know? And it's most of the time. It's so hard to know.

And then you have the whole question as well. And I'm curious your thoughts on this of like, what is an influencer. At what point do your parents become an influencers? Because we had some people testifying at these hearings and about laws about family vlogging again that had parents that overshared on Facebook, but none of it was monetized. Should they be subject to these protections? Because we have a lot, I mean, I wrote a story years ago about kids discovering that they're, you know, the first time they Google themselves and discover that they have an online footprint. And the amount of content that just gets put out on kids generally, not just from their own parents, but from sports teams, from classrooms, school programs. Like we have a lot of content on the internet. And sometimes a kid, yeah, their soccer

team put all of these clips about them online. They grow up. They don't like soccer anymore. Now it's forever on their digital footprint. So to me, it seems like these broader issues around privacy, data privacy. I would love if we pass something like comprehensive data privacy reform and things like the right to be forgotten that the UK has rather than these sort of like regressive reactionary bills in some ways that I don't think fix the broader problem. I also think maybe there's a problem with lawmakers not understanding the industry and understanding what a family vlogger is and what a child influencer is because a lot of these lawmakers that I've talked to for stories, the first time they've heard about this was when they had this bill proposed.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I think that just goes back to the broader problem of how can you regulate an industry when you don't even understand it. One thing that also I think is so wild to me, it sticks with me all the time, is that story I did for the Atlantic years ago when I did interview the kids about their digital footprints and a significant portion of the kids were upset that there wasn't more. Like they Googled themselves and some kids were upset. You know, one kid found like when he went on Instagram, he found like to sign up for his first Instagram account at age 13. He found that there was

already a hashtag for his name. He clicked the hashtag. His entire family had been sharing photos of him throughout his entire childhood basically under this hashtag. That was the thing back then. Yeah. And I can understand like feeling so violated, feeling frustrated. Like we, you don't not having control over your own sort of online identity is traumatizing for a lot of young people. But a ton of kids were mad that there wasn't more. They were, or not mad, but they were, they wanted more. One kid talked about trying to get photos of himself on Google images and not so many kids felt like not feeling like a real quote unquote human being until they had a robust digital footprint. And to me, this just speaks of like this bigger issue in society of like whatever the stat currently is of like

XYZ kids want to be influencers for a living growing up. Yeah. Like I can. amount. Yeah. And I, you know, I think it's a good point that like as a new mom myself, I haven't shown my daughter online. Maybe she'll hate me for that, you know? And maybe if I had shown her, she would have hated me for that. So maybe she'll hate me either way. And maybe that's just what being a parent is, you know, is like making the best choice that you can and like hoping that your kid only hates you a little bit for it. Yeah. I feel like it's all parents can do. I feel like it's good to be responsible. I personally feel like with the rise of facial recognition technology. It's good to keep your kids off the internet as much as possible.

Yeah. And let them define their own digital footprint and make those mistakes for themselves. I think it's good to get kids on the internet early, teach them to use these platforms early. Yes, they will make mistakes. It's better that they make those mistakes at age 13 or 14 than 20 or 21. But like you said, there's no right answer to any of these things. There's not. And I don't think it's useful to act like there is. Yeah. Well, Forcessa, you have a book coming out on all of this, which I'm really excited to read. Can you tell us anything? that you found in your reporting that surprised you? I think that one thing that has fascinated me is that, of course, like we talked about,

there's this idea that if you put your kids online, you're evil, whatever. I've never believed that. But as I'm interviewing these parents who have made tons of money online, a lot of them come from very difficult backgrounds. Like I talked to this one mom who is now a single mom of five. She only graduated high school. She makes a ton of money on Instagram. And she's like, what am I supposed to do?

like how else could I take care of my five kids, you know? And I'm like, I think there has to be some nuance in this conversation, which is what I'm hoping to bring to my book, is that especially in this country where we have no social safety net, where we have no paid guaranteed federal maternity leave, where women are so often left alone without a village. Like, it's no wonder they become mom influencers and family vloggers because that's how they can take care of their family. And I think it says a lot about American society. I mean, I could get into it forever, but it's It's fascinating and I've found out so much and I can't wait to share it with everyone. What is the name of your book and can people pre-order it?

Yeah, it's called Like, Follow, Subscribe. You'll be able to pre-order in a few months. So if you follow me anywhere, I'm at High Fortessa. I will be posting it and I can't wait for you guys to read it. I think it's really going to blow your mind. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for chatting. Thanks for having me.

That's all for the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larcich and Jelani Carter. Our executive producer is Zach Back. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture newsletter, UserMag. That's usermag.com. See you next time.