Child social media influencer Piper Rockelle began her online career at just eight years old, skyrocketing to fame alongside her group of tweenage friends known as “The Squad.” But behind the scenes of playful videos, Rockelle’s mother, and manager, Tiffany Smith allegedly created an environment rife with emotional, physical, and even sexual abuse, according to Netflix‘s shocking new docuseries “Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing.”
Unfortunately, what Piper and her friends experienced isn’t an anomaly. Every day, thousands of parents exploit child “influencers” too young to run their own social media accounts. Many of these adults may not realize, or simply don’t care, that some of the children’s most committed and lucrative followers have perverse intentions.
Whether they’re naïve or corrupt, some parents are exploiting their children for financial gain. It’s long past time for lawmakers and social media platforms to put a stop to it.
One exposé of 5,000 “child influencer” Instagram accounts revealed they had 32 million connections to male followers. For the most popular accounts, those with more than 100,000 followers, men made up 75% of the audience. In some cases, that percentage was more than 90%.
Not all of these men have bad intentions. But far too many do. One man commented “You are so sexy” on a photo of a five-year-old in a bikini. Another told a 10-year-old girl how good her breasts looked through her crop top. Yet another offered a mom $65,000 for “an hour” with her child, according to the New York Times.
The parents who run the accounts often naively encourage this behavior. They may believe they’re helping their child’s modeling, singing, or gymnastics career.
In other cases, parents choose to look the other way. After all, more followers, no matter how pedophilic they are, mean more brand deals — and more money.
Last year, businesses paid social media influencers a staggering $24 billion to promote and endorse their products. A single sponsored post can garner up to $20,000. Some parents even sell “subscriptions” to their children’s followers, offering access to exclusive photos or private chats for an additional fee.
“Influencer” is too neutral a word for what is happening to these children on social media. A child cannot consent to having their pictures posted and monetized online. When parents do so, it amounts to exploitation.
The social media platforms’ current guidelines aren’t doing enough to protect children. The Times’s exposé found 50 instances of “questionable material” and received only one response from Instagram over the course of its eight-month investigation.
That’s an unacceptably low rate. Meta, Instagram’s parent company, found that there are “inappropriate” interactions with 500,000 child Instagram accounts every day.
This lack of accountability creates social media platforms that are virtual havens for abuse. It also sets social media apart from other consumer products, which typically have a mechanism for recourse. Consider unsafe children’s toys, which can be reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission for a recall.
Social media companies must institute stronger protections for children. That includes not just improving response rates to reported material but closing loopholes in current age restrictions. If a child doesn’t meet the age requirement to create a profile, their parents shouldn’t be able to create one for them. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee a parent will act in the best interests of their child.
Meanwhile, lawmakers must pass legislation that discourages the exploitation of children on social media for financial gain. Utah just became the fourth state, following California, Illinois, and Minnesota, that requires parents to set aside some of the money they earn from sponsored ads featuring their children for their children.
Future legislation at both the state and federal level could take those protections further, whether by banning sponsored videos featuring children, extending child labor laws to cover social media, or enabling children to request that their photos get taken down from social media.
Our nation’s leaders are finally taking an interest in protecting children from threats on social media. Yet in these extreme cases, we must remember that there are some parents from whom children need protection, too.
Teresa Huizar is CEO of Washington, D.C.-based National Children’s Alliance (NCA), the nation’s network of nearly 1,000 Children’s Advocacy Centers, providing justice and healing through services to child victims of abuse and their families.