According to a 2021 YouGov survey, 11% of teenage boys and 6% of teenage girls said their dream job would be to become a YouTuber or streamer. No wonder kids dream of becoming influencers: Not only did YouGov find that 65% of teenagers follow at least one Influencers, but audiences can only really see the fascinating, interesting, or adventurous lives of the content creators who ultimately edit them.
But one former child influencer, Shari Franke, is the daughter of the infamous Ruby Franke. 8 passengers The YouTube channel recently spoke with members of the Utah Senate to discuss the very serious difficulties faced by child influencers, particularly in the context of family vlogging. “I want to be clear: There is never any good reason to post a child online for money or fame,” she said in a particularly poignant moment in her testimony. “There is no such thing as a moral or ethical home vlogger.”
8 passengers Run by Ruby and then-husband Kevin Frank, it featured the couple and their six children – Sally, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve. The account’s subscriber base peaked at 2.3 million but petered out in 2022. threatened to decapitate her young daughter’s stuffed animal; left a son sleeping on the living room floor for months. In 2023, Ruby and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt were convicted of six felony counts of child abuse. Court documents detail months of gruesome abuse, including starvation and beatings, suffered by two of the four children still living with Ruby.
But Sally’s testimony had nothing to do with Ruby’s felony, which occurred after she no longer lived with her parents.
“I am not speaking today as the daughter of a felon or as the victim of an unusually abusive mother,” she began in her testimony. “I come here today as a victim of home vlogging,” she later said. “Long before Ruby’s crime, home vlogging destroyed my innocence.”
Sally went on to explain that the purpose of her testimony was not to provide a solution to the problem, or even to ban home video blogs (at least not at this stage), but to provide first-hand insight into the issue of child influencers as This is a problem, especially in Utah. In fact, while this is a problem in any state, Sally believes that Utah is a hotbed for family vlogging because The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (headquartered in Utah) encourages large families and the sharing of family vlogs. content. But she said that family video blogging is not just recording cute moments or randomly turning on the camera from time to time, but “24/7 labor.”
“It’s a full-time job involving staff, business credit cards, managers and marketing strategies,” she said. “The difference between a family vlog and a regular business, however, is that all children are employees. From before birth to the day they turn 18, children have become the stars of the family business on YouTube, Instagram and other social media platforms.
Even paying the children, like Sally, was often done under the table. She went on to describe the money as a “bribery”.
“For example, if we captured a particularly embarrassing moment or exciting event in our lives, we would receive a $100 reward or a shopping trip,” she said. “Or, other times, just going on vacation is enough to cover the expenses, since most kids don’t have access to regular or expensive trips. Never mind that the labor of the kids actually pays for the vacation or trip.
But even in a more In a perfect world, the question of children being asked to trade privacy for financial gain is a thorny one: What is the cost of making childhood public? Non-stop shooting? How could a child agree to such an arrangement, especially when they have no idea how it will affect them later in life.
“How do we determine how much children should be paid to appear in family content? What is the price worth giving up childhood?” she asked.
She warns that even kids who say they enjoy creating content should be viewed with suspicion.
“At the time, I told you I had a choice in what I shot, but I’ve come to understand that every child influencer suffers from Stockholm Syndrome to some degree,” she said.
Sally concluded that she foresees the problem only getting worse as more child influencers grow up and consider what fame and money ultimately costs them.
“I understand that as Utahns, we don’t appreciate government overreach,” she said. “But when it comes to protecting children, this should be a bipartisan concern. The only people harmed by child influencer laws are the parents who exploit their children.
