What if every embarrassing childhood home-video of yours was shown to millions of people online? Such is the life of a child on a family vlogging channel. Family vlogging channels are social media channels generally involving parents video-taping or photographing their family’s daily life, struggles, and experiences and posting them online to social media platforms. Family vlogging channels have gained increasing popularity with the rise of Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok, as viewers flock to see allegedly ‘genuine’ experiences of others. 8 Passengers was one such family vlogging channel. Headed by mother Ruby Franke, the channel shared videos centering on Franke’s Christian household and strict parenting style for her six children. Her videos garnered millions of views, generating large amounts of devoted subscribers and revenue. However, Franke’s parenting advice turned out to be wholly untrustworthy, as she was recently charged with six felony counts of child abuse. Franke’s youngest daughter and son were found by police, malnourished and with wounds from restraints.
Unfortunately, the allegations against Franke are not the first concerning case regarding family vlog social media channels. They are part of an ongoing debate about the ethics of family vlogging, and raise important questions about privacy, consent, compensation, and safety. The case of the 8 Passengers channel demonstrates that thethat the public can never truly know what goes on behind the closed doors, or rather, the turned-off cameras of family vloggers. As is customary with social media, creators feel a pressure to cater to their audiences, giving them the (exaggerated) drama, reactions, jokes, and stories that they want. With family vlogging channels, children are pulled into this performance. As parents feel pressured to live up to their audience’s desires, their parenting is no longer authentic and becomes poisoned by the drive to concoct over-the-top situations for their viewers. This results in children being put in staged situations, where their parents are purposefully trying to elicit a dramatic reaction from them. In addition to the external situation in which the children are placed, they may be pressured, or even forced, to give and/or repeat their parent’s desired reaction. What makes this worse, is that this toxic environment is nearly all-encompassing for the children. They may internalize their parents’ pressures, feeling the need to always ‘be on.’ Ready for any unexpected situation, ready to produce any reaction - regardless of how genuine it is. Along with the feeling of being ‘always on,’ comes the erosion of a sense of privacy. At any moment, a camera could be on, either hidden away or held by their parents. Any vulnerable moment or compromising position could be posted online, for millions to see - including potential child predators. As previously noted, many family vlog channels involve children who are under the legal age of consent. As such, all of the above issues take place in a situation where those children cannot give full and informed consent to their parents to post very personal videos to very public platforms. While children can easily say ‘yes’ to please their parents, they are not old enough to understand the gravity of (online) fame and the permanence of a digital footprint. As they grow up, they will likely have to confront a one-sided intimacy where total strangers, interviewers, dates, or teachers know personal and private details about their life. Successful parents of family vlogging channels may enjoy heavy streams of income from their monetized content. Unfortunately, what these children receive in exchange for their work, invasions of privacy, violations of consent, and existence in such a stressful environment is barely regulated. While they may enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle as a de facto result of their parents increased income, that is not guaranteed. Additionally, it is not guaranteed that they will receive any of the revenue from a video that they helped create or made possible. However, that is changing. In this uncharted intersection of private life with digital fame, the American state of Illinois has decided to brave the frontier. A new Illinois law requires the proper compensation of child influencers. If a child makes up more than thirty percent of video content for at least one year, that child must receive compensation in a blocked trust-fund. The amount of compensation depends on how often they are featured in the content. They are legally required to receive half the percent of revenue of the percent of time that they are in a video. Thus, if a child is in fifty percent of a video, they must get twenty-five percent of the video’s earnings. This law is a major milestone for the rights of child influencers, but it does come with concerns about enforcement and long term sustainability. It also does nothing to address the above issues of safety, consent, and privacy. Thus, while we celebrate this win, we simultaneously hope to increase protections for child influencers and raise awareness of the issues surrounding this new digital territory. a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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