Instagram is a scary place for young girls — made even worse when their own parents are complicit in putting them in harm’s way.
Many teen and tween girls dream of being an influencer. Sadly, some parents seem more than happy to see brand deals and money coming in, even if it means putting their children on the screens of pedophiles.
A new report from the Wall Street Journal tells the story of an anonymous young Instagram influencer who garnered fame and fortune for her dance photos and videos.
By sharing her passion for dance, the high schooler has saved up $20,000 — from donations, brand deals and subscriber-only content — which she plans to spend on a first car and college tuition.
The only problem: 92% of her followers are men.
Her mother, who admitted she supported her daughter’s influencer ambitions, is not only aware of that statistic, but also has been alerted that photos of her daughter in a bikini are being swapped in creepy Telegram group chats full of anonymous pervs.
“We’re all model scouts, agents and brand owners,” one Telegram message read. “We’re totally NOT jerking off to the pics.”
It’s a creepy and exploitative dynamic: a teen girl sharing her love for dance — only her influence is on older creeps, not aspiring young dancers.
It’s a dynamic made possible thanks to parental supervision.
Meta rightfully doesn’t allow anyone under 13 to open an Instagram account, but it does allow for “adult-run minor accounts” which require parental consent and parental monitoring.
“If you want to be an influencer and work with brands and get paid, and it all works with how many people like and engage with your post, you have to accept it,” the dancer’s mom told The Journal.
She admits to spending as much as two to four hours a day blocking users who were creepy towards her daughter, who was then in middle school.
When is enough enough?
Although it’s hard to believe, kid influencers — from teen dancers to toy testers — are a hot commodity on the Instagram market.
Tween dancer Everleigh Rose has nearly 5 million followers on her Instagram account that’s run by her mother, and 7-year-old twins Taytum and Oakley Fisher have more than 3 million.
Kidfluencers are a burgeoning commodity for brands who see dollar signs — and parents willing to turn a blind eye to the dark underbelly of the internet.
In some ways, this is nothing new. Parents have long been critiqued for foisting their kids into Hollywood child stardom, or caking their little girls in makeup to chase beauty pageant prize money.
But it’s time we call it what it is: exploitation.
Kids need to be protected from the internet — whether as users scrolling through content, or as influencers producing it.
Finally, moves are being made to protect kids from social media.
Lawmakers like Ron DeSantis have attempted to enforce minimum age requirements on social media platforms, and the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy just called on Congress to slap social media platforms with warning labels similar to those on tobacco products.
“Legislation from Congress should shield young people from online harassment, abuse, and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds,” Murthy wrote in a Monday op-ed in the New York Times.
He’s right. But it won’t be enough to protect kid influencers with parents who ignore the warning signs.
Meta needs to step up and close the parent-supervised child influencer loophole, because no kid should be an influencer, full stop. And, more importantly, parents need to step up and put the kibosh on the influencer dream.
It might be a glitzy and lucrative path, but it’s also a slippery slope to harassment and abuse.
