Parenting influencers must pay their kids for using them in videos now: ‘You have to be ethical’
It’s a different kind of pocket money.
In Illinois, a new amendment to the state’s Child Labor Law went into effect July 1, requiring that children who appear on their parent or guardian’s social media profile be paid for appearances.
The bill specifically states that children under the age of 16 should receive 15% of an influencer’s gross earnings if they appear in at least 30% of monetized content online. Moms, dads or minders must be responsible for putting the earnings into a trust account.
The law also states that the child is allowed to request the deletion of content featuring themselves, and should the adult not comply, the minor has the ability to sue for damages.
“Social media has become the premium for getting your brand out to a large audience,” Johanna Grange, a mom and co-founder of the social media marketing agency Oak Street Social, told “Good Morning America.”
“Once blogging and Instagram and YouTube took off, and now we have TikTok and so many more, people found it as a viable way to make either a side hustle or a full-time compensation.”
Influencers with more than one million followers can earn a whopping $20,000 from sponsored content, while those with smaller followers can still earn a few thousands from a single post, she added.
Now, with the rise of mommy vloggers and “sharenting” — a term coined to describe parents sharing their kids’ milestones online — people are raising concerns about the wellbeing of children who are shared on social media by their guardians.
Shreya Nallamothu, 16, who has been credited with bringing this issue to local legislators in Illinois, said she “kept seeing cases of exploitation” the more she researched.
“Especially for very young children who maybe don’t understand what talking to a camera means and they’re not able to conceptualize what a million people looks like, they don’t understand what they’re putting out into the internet for profit and that it’s not going to be able to go away and that their parents are making money off of it,” she previously told “GMA.”
Carolyn Jarrett, a mom and the co-founder of Oak Street Social, said “going after people’s pocketbooks” is a powerful tactic to get people to wake up, reflect on their behavior and spark conversation.
“I understand where it could go south,” Brooke Raybould, a mom to four boys and a content creator, told “GMA.”
“I’m not to say that it’s not necessary that people aren’t looking at this and making sure, because you have to be an ethical person no matter what you do … And we need certain bodies to make sure that people are making the ethical decision.”
Raybould boasts more than 702,000 followers on Instagram, where she regularly posts content featuring her husband, sons and their day-to-day life as a family.
In just two years of growing her digital following, she was raking in more than six figures a year, which she says feels as if she had “struck gold”: She can be home and spend time with her kids while also making “a decent living” from sharing her life.
“It kept me doing something in addition to motherhood that was fun for me and challenging and fueling that entrepreneurial spirit,” she said, calling it “a dream.”
While her home state of Virginia has not enacted laws similar to Illinois, she can understand why such regulations are being put into place, as other states begin to consider them.
Raybould likens her social media presence to running a small business, and says its “very rare” that her sons help her with more than 15 minutes of content.
“I tell them, ‘Mommy does this, we do this, I share it with other moms,'” she explained.
“I periodically ask them if they feel comfortable, if it’s okay and they’re very positive.”
Chis Chin, a father-of-two who uploads YouTube videos of him and his son playing video games online, compares his content to that which parents capture at their child’s various activities.
YouTube, he said, is “just like any other activity that a kid does,” likening it to parents enrolling their kids in competitive sports in the hopes that someday they’ll earn money from it.
“It’s no different than, say, a parent filming their kid playing hockey or soccer and posting it, right? It’s just now we’re playing video games instead,” he told GMA, adding that the pair only film themselves playing video games for half an hour. “And that’s like our bonding moment too.”
Parent influencers, however, have to meticulously monitor what information about their child is put online, although neither Chin nor Raybould have faced an issue with privacy.
Raybould, for one, does not post in real-time and refuses to share her kids’ harder moments.
“I feel like if my kids ever decided they didn’t want to be part of it … and even if I decided to stop one day, I feel like I could pretty quickly just stop,” she told GMA.
“That gives me hope for my kids too, that it’s not like they’re a celebrity’s child. They a content creator’s child, and when they grow up, they’ll have their own thing.”
