August 6, 2025 • 38 mins
Documentary director Ines Novacic spent five years following kidfluencers and their families to get the behind the scenes scoop on the industry. She joins Karah to discuss Born to Be Viral: The Real Lives of Kidfluencers, her six-part docuseries on these content creators. Karah and Ines explore the rise of kidfluencing as a modern path to generational wealth, how the business is changing and the potential psychological toll of growing up on camera.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story and Karaen
today you're in the host seat and I meek you
to hear what you got in store.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I am.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
It feels good.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I feel very powerful and get ready. OZ today is
all about kid fluencers.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Kidfluencers, i e. Social media influencers who are under sixteen.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
That's the correct portmanteau kid fluencer. I recently spoke with
Inez Novacik, who's the director of a six part docuseriies
for ABC News called Born to Be Viral, The Real
Lives of kid Fluencers.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
This already caught my eye and when he told me
about it. But the concept of influencers I find one
part fascinating and frankly two parts horrifying.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I think a lot of people would agree with you,
but also some don't. Kidfluencer content is extremely popular and
this will blow your hair back. One of the most
popular kidfluencers on the Internet has one hundred and twenty
nine million YouTube subscribers.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You know, I watched this documentary series a couple of
years ago about Charlie and Dixie Demilio, who, I guess what,
had just grown out of being influencers at the time,
they were probably eighteen and twenty, but had begun their
lives ask influencers and watching the family dynamics and the
pressure and the strain and the money and everything. I mean,
it was really I thought it was a very very
interesting documentary series.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, I mean, clearly this subject elicits really strong opinions,
and that's why Hez set out to paint what I
think is a non judgmental portrait of the lives of
child influencers. She spent over five years following around three
families in the business and documenting their day.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
To day And who are the families.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, I'm going to let.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Her introduce you to all of the families, and the
first one is the Fisher family.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
They are a Mormon family, so a lot of it
is infused by their belief of kind of family values
and the role of the family as a vehicle for
good in the world. So everyone's in the videos, the
whole family. Now, they have five kids and they just
film their regular, every day everything they do.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So here's the Fisher family dressed as the main characters
from The Wizard of Oz on Halloween.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Just looks this is more fun than my childhood.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, I was going to say could your childhood pass
the test of being a kid fluenza?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Absolutely no. I mean there's two parents, both dressed up
looking super happy, and then there are five kids with
some of the best looking costumes I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Another family she spent time with is the McClure family.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Here she is again.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
The McClures are a biracial family. Ammy is an immigrant
from Nigeria. Immy McClure. She's the mom who not only
got into this more accidentally through a video that happened
to go viral, and then they harnessed that virality and
that's allowed them to make a living sharing their kids
(03:07):
and their life on social media. You know how I
used to you all the time.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And you're too young to know.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
The McClure family are more planned in what they do,
so it's kind of like family friendly skits. So you know,
in the series, we we do behind the scenes of
such a video where the dad justin gets dressed up
as Spider Man, So what am I? So they're kind
(03:40):
of like creating many episodes where the family is doing
stuff for their entertainment brand, as they call it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Inez also followed Ethan Rodriguez and his mom, Daisy they.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Are aspiring to build a kid influencer empire and dream
what kind of videos are we going to be doing?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Then? Picnic? You know, I said, what kind of videos
are we going to be doing?
Speaker 4 (04:06):
For this? Tiwn? Okay again, what's up?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Then? When you're holding the camera hold it out like
I didn't, so like you're kind of like so you
can grab yourself, don't move too much?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Okay? Rights me? And they again are an embodiment not
just of this I think allure and follower culture and
this fame kind of culture we have right now, but
also I think that they show a glimpse into the
economic realities facing many Americans today.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
We had some home videos in the Welsh and household
when I was growing up, but they were few and
far between. But I imagine the psychological effects as a
kid of being on the whole time and science perform
when the camera comes out, and also kind of knowing
I guess internally or intuitively that like your performance may
(05:00):
some financial consequences for the families. It reminds me of
a tweet I once saw where somebody Toddler said, don't
forget to subscribe as he was being touched in for
bed because he thought that meant goodbye.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
That's so crazy, good night, mom.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I mean, we think and talk a lot about what
the deluge of social media and content is doing to
kids just by consuming it. But imagine what it's like
to be kind of an active participant in it from
such an early age.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
You know, it's interesting because the docuseries does depict some
of the sinister side of all of this.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
We filmed some things that the families regret doing that
are hard to watch, that ended up with kids being upset,
and then they talk about why they would never do
it again, instead of asking us to just not show it.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Inez says, these are stories of deeply loving families who
are media savvy and who are finding a way to
provide for their kids. So Inez set out to make
a series about family and family life where social media
happens to play a big role, because, in her mind,
the kidfluencer movement evolved from the success of mommy bloggers
in the early twenty tens.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Here's anes the child influencer phenomenon. I think could not
have been built without the mommy influencer and the figure
of the mother. And because I think at the time
when it was going on, it was dismissed by the
serious journalistic powers. The coverage was relegated to sort of
more pop culture dimension, So mommy bloggers were not covered
(06:34):
by Wall Street journal tech reporters in the same way
as like, you know, a Mark Zuckerberg or a startup founder.
It was like, e, these are silly women and they're
doing silly brand deals. And then without realizing it, in
our society, all of a sudden, it seems like, wait,
you know a kid is making twenty five million dollars,
(06:56):
Like what's wrong with our world? These parents are bad?
And I think if we're failing these kids and even
these families, it's because there was such a big gap
of taking it seriously and seeing it as the business
that it was, and seeing it as female founders and
seeing it now as family founders. And I'm not putting
(07:17):
a value judgment saying they're right or they're wrong, or
they're good or they're bad, but I think we did
them a disservice. And now it's sort of like the
train is running without a driver, and now we're all reactionary.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And that's where I wanted to start my conversation with
Inez with how these families considered and addressed the mounting
criticisms of the kidfluencer space. Here's the rest of our conversation.
What are some of the most common criticisms about this
kind of work and how did each family consider those
criticisms and address them.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
No, it's a really important question, and I think what
I loved about doing the series is that, you know,
it always brings strong opinions, and usually it's you know,
either I'm against these families doing this, or you know,
power to them. They're spending time with their families and
making a lot of money. It's the new American dream.
And what the families have said to me, in the
(08:13):
case of the Fishers, they really see it as, Oh,
I'm infusing social media and the interness with images of
a happy family, with cuteness, with a genuine sort of
value system that prizes families and kids. And that's at
(08:34):
a time when a lot of social media focuses on
negativity wars, politics debate. You know, they sort of say,
you want to cast us as bad, like look at
general content, you know, and they say that they welcome
and would welcome any regulation like the parents in the
Fisher family, Madisone and Kyler both gravitated towards Hollywood. Madison
(08:57):
was a child actor and model wanted to make in Hollywood.
So did Kyler. And so they say, you know, if
we could have the same type of framework like what
California offers through the Cougan Law protecting the earnings of children,
we would do that for our kids. And anyway, they say,
we are good parents. We set aside money for our kids,
(09:18):
and we're earning a lot of money that we now
spend on our kids and will continue to And so
they say that for these three reasons, to them and
to others, it should be clear that they are not
exploiting their children. And the McClures similarly, are frustrated that
this backlash against family and child content creators has swept
(09:40):
them up in the same tide. And they are very
confident in the fact of their good parenting style and
their relationship with their kids and the way they do
things to say, you know, categorically, we do not exploit
our children. We raise them well and leave us alone. Basically,
you know, like, why are you trying to paint us
(10:03):
with the same brush as somebody who is exploiting their children,
And so, you know, I think it might seem obvious
to people to cast and lay the blame at the
foot of the parents, right, I think that's sort of
a reflex reaction. It's like, oh, these parents are doing this,
they are bad, and they should be better, they should
be doing something about this. But to me, I think
(10:26):
I look at it from another dimension as well, where
I look at well, why are we not putting that
same blame on the brands that work with these families,
the platforms that host their content, and even the viewers
who empower their existence, Because the only reason this type
(10:47):
of content exists is because there is a demand for us.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Is there any sense of what this type of virality
and pressure has on kids? Like, has there been significant
or meaningful recent search on this?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
The short answer is no, But I will caveat that
by saying it's because this is so new, and I
think kind of like laws are always late to follow
certain trends, it's the same with this type of research.
You know, I when I started out Carara, I was
looking for a specialist, a child psychologist or child psychiatrists
(11:23):
who worked with children influencers to answer that exact question.
There simply wasn't anyone like I. You know, I talked
to a few people who had maybe worked with child
stars or had studied them, or were academics and had
thought about it. But even if you said kid influencers,
they thought teenagers. And I think the term.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Kid influencers no, no, no, ye, these.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Are babies, babies to you know, to age ten. And
so it's shocking to me. I guess that they's still
not research into the impact of social media on young children,
and that even is too general. I would kind of
subhead that and say, okay, well, what is the impact
(12:06):
on the consumerism culture when you start that early with kids?
What is the impact on family ties? What is the
impact on your concept of self and selfhood or on values?
Do these kids understand the difference in themselves, like, you know, neurologically, psychologically,
(12:28):
on filming time being different to family time and privacy,
and so aren't we all somewhat complicit? Is a question
that I kept coming back to in making this series.
You know, I really had to think hard about, you know,
what is my role in all this? And that concern
(12:49):
trickle down into the way we filmed. We filmed with
me and one other person. We filmed where we interview
the kids only for a few minutes at a time
at a time when they said yes. So it would
happen where we'd set up a whole interview, the kids
would come in and then like thirty seconds and they'd
be like, can we just go play? And we're like yeah,
(13:10):
you know, go right right. So I wanted to make
sure that those questions and you know, how are these
kids going to react when they watched this in twenty
years is something that kind of guided the way I
worked throughout making this series.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, I just think, you know, you followed these families
for five years, which is a very long time. I
wonder what changes you noticed throughout this time, and what
were the things that stayed with you about following families
for this long.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
You know, I think five years, on one hand, is
so long, and then on the other hand, I feel
like I would have expected more to change tangibly. But
these kids are still so little, you know, they were
so little when we started filming, and now the oldest
of them are twelve, and so I don't know yet,
(14:04):
and I still don't have the benefit of hide and
sight to be able to say you know, this definitively changed,
But what evolved certainly was their relationship to the work
they were doing, their relationship to social media. And interestingly,
all of the families who we follow at well, I
shouldn't say all the McClure and Fisher families who were
(14:27):
kind of rising in levels of success throughout our filming,
at one point found themselves in the exact same place
of do we give in to trends or do we
stay true to our family? And they both face that question.
So the series tells the story of these families, but
I think also traces the context and the business of
(14:47):
social media as it's evolved over those five years. You know,
the world of social media today is so different to
what it was even when I started researching this in
twenty eighteen and then started filming the year following. So
you've got platforms that are popular today that didn't exist
back then and were kind of irrelevant. You know. The
(15:07):
most obvious one is perhaps TikTok. YouTube was probably where
most of these families would have focused their content, and
then the rise of TikTok created this ripple effect on
other platforms where YouTube started, YouTube shorts, Instagram now has
stories and reels, and it became about short form content.
(15:30):
Short form is king, so the way these families make
money has to change. They're not investing as much time
in filming these old school you know, I say old
school this is like seven years ago, but vlogs at
last for fifteen twenty minutes, where they're not really doing
many cuts, even though they're having maybe some on screen
pop ups to jush up the content. But the way
(15:51):
they're filming now is more strategic, but they're doing more
shorter form content. So things like that have really impacted
the way that these families I think planned for and
plan for monetizing the content that they make.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Did the parents share other motivations or considerations that they
weighed when choosing this path for their kids and their family.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
The parents did talk a lot about not just how
they got into this, but why they maybe wanted to
get into this, and then why they stayed doing it.
And I think that while each story is unique, because
the parents have their own backstory, there's this general question
(16:37):
of am I living through my kids? How do I
think about that? How do I think I'm doing that?
Am I doing it somewhat or to a certain extent.
So there's the financial motives, which is that you can
earn a lot of money doing this, and I think
people still don't realize just how much money you can make.
(16:57):
And I think a lot of families are not necessarily
making millions and millions of dollars. That's just a few
people and the other families aspired to be like them.
But hundreds of thousands of families are making six figures
doing this.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Which is more than they might be making doing something
else exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
And then their motivation also, they've told me, is really
wanting to spend time at home with their kids. So
in a world where if you want to earn a
good living, it is demanding on your time, you're out
of the house, usually two parents working. There's childcare involved.
These parents say that this completely liberates them from those
(17:38):
concerns of missing out on their kids' childhoods, and they
they're with their kids all the time and that is
a huge drole for them. And then you know, in
doing this work, they've realized that the future is social media.
So they see what they're doing as building a legacy,
in their words, for their kids, so their kids will
(17:58):
grow up to be eighteen they will in Harris accounts
with the following of five, ten, fifteen million people, and
then they can do without what they want because that
is real power, even in today's world, and they see
it as only becoming more powerful as time goes on.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
So they're thinking about it as like generational wealth, almost
like a transfer of wealth exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Yes, this is value in today's culture. Currency is attention,
and that attention are those followers and those subscribers who
these children have on their accounts and then can take over,
you know, they can take over their accounts technically when
they're thirteen and the first generation of kids are who
(18:45):
we follow are going to be thirteen in the next
year or so. But more than that, when they're eighteen,
you know, who knows what will happen by then can
that compound? You know? Even the stark difference of the
first interview with Evan alexis where they're talking about, you know,
how many followers you have? They say five hundred million
or one hundred million, and then they say, yeah, because
(19:07):
that's not even a lot of money, right. They don't
like followers of money like they're they're not they're the
same word, like it doesn't matter. And then by the
end of it, they know what a brand deal is,
they know how much money or they think they know
how much money they're making from a brand deal. They
start to understand these concepts, And I really wanted that
(19:28):
to be part of the story too, because they were
so little and even now they're so little, Like now
they literally turned twelve, like a week ago. They're so little.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
One other thing that surprised me is like how much
this work created a vacuum and that some of the
kids decided to be homeschooled so that they could create
more content throughout the day. And you know, the mccler
twins said they wanted to take over the business and
eventually become actresses, and you know, underscores your point of
(20:02):
this being a family business and a source of inherited wealth.
So I'm I'm curious if you made that connection as well.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Yeah, you know, I think in the case of the McClure's,
these kids were very outgoing and before they were even
eleven twelve and saying they wanted to be actresses and
making their own content. They were on red carpets they
like interviewed Steve Corell. They've had opportunities, they wrote a
kid's fashion book. They were always very outgoing kids, so
(20:33):
with them, it didn't surprise me that they would say
something like that. Now, their understanding of it and their
seriousness and conviction in us is something that was I
think nurtured by the fact of kind of growing up
on camera and their parents encouraging them to pursue that.
And I think when they want to be homeschooled and
(20:55):
they want to be actresses, I think it's sort of
like the sum of all those things is the reason why.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
After the break, who are these millions of followers stay
with us? I think what's even more confounding to me
is who the audience is, and that the audience is
so vast for these families, and they're so aware of
(21:32):
their audience, like they're not pushing this into a vacuum.
They're aware that there are people that will consume this content. So,
you know, in making this doc, who did you find
is like the demographic.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
As much as social media and the mechanisms of the
business of these apps evolve, so does the demographic. Because
of course the kids are also growing up, so perhaps
when they're three years old, the main demo are parent
run accounts of kids or family accounts who watch them
for that reason, kids watch kids. That's how Ethan got
(22:03):
into this. He watched Ryan from Ryan's toy review. He
now wants to be a kid influencer. So there's a
child audience in this and a family audience. But then
we filmed with the McClures hosting a birthday party for
their son and they invited their followers and most of
those followers were actually adults, and they were adults who
(22:24):
were watching the twins because they reminded them of their kids.
There was a woman who, you know, jokingly said I
can be your Internet grandma, and you know, said she
watched them for hours a day their family channel because
it reminded her of when she had babies. So they
really can run the gamut because by the end of
(22:46):
the series, the McLure Twins, they just turned twelve, and
when they look at their analytics as we're filming them,
they discover that thirty percent now of their audience is
male ages. You know, maybe twin to forty. I can't
member exactly, but sort of like thirty ish and that
was new, and I think the audience is varied, and
(23:09):
I think for journalists and even for myself as a filmmaker,
it was very hard to get the hard data without
relying on the families sharing with me their insights and analytics,
because these creators, they're actually making content in response to
the insights and analytics that they are seeing on their
dashboards on their back end to say, if this isn't
(23:33):
doing well, you should do this, which is doing well.
And it's not just the families deciding to do this,
they are being encouraged by their quote unquote partners at
these platforms, so that these platforms have a staff of
people tasked with and dedicated to working with these families,
(23:54):
guiding them on what their audience is responding to and
how to adapt in real time. So it's quite a
sophisticated mechanism, and it's how quickly they're able to adapt
to that advice in these trends directly impact how they're
able to earn a living.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah, last episode, you mentioned that as of June twenty
twenty five, several states have passed laws to protect the
earnings of child influencers, but that experts warn that these
regulations could be difficult to enforce. You also mentioned that
popular platforms for YouTube metat TikTok say they have policies
(24:33):
in place to protect minors from abuse, exploitation, and sexualization.
Why give this context to the viewers as they finish
the series? Why is that important?
Speaker 4 (24:44):
I think it's important because it's what comes next, and
it's what I want viewers to think about as they're
walking away from the series. I think it reinforces the
work we tried to do in the story to weave
in the context of social media and public opinion about
children and family creators. And then as we were finishing
(25:07):
filming and finishing editing, some changes happened that I felt
were an important part of that contextual framework. There are
a handful of states that have passed laws to protect
the earnings of child influencers child content creators. However, if
you read what the stipulations are and how they define
(25:29):
is a channel a kid channel? I am skeptical knowing
how hard it was for me, for example, simply to
request firsthand data of who viewers are of this content.
I wonder how we're going to get the data that
breaks down how many minutes per video a child is
featured in to be able to ascertain Okay, does it
(25:53):
qualify as a children's channel? Okay, then it is subject
to having to put a certain amount in savings account
of trust for the child to access at eighteen. You know,
it's sort of the specifics matter. You know, if we're
going to go through the effort to pass these laws
and to celebrate them, we need to ensure that their
(26:15):
enforceability is viable. We need to ensure that they're not
framed in such a way or diluted, perhaps in such
a way that you actually can't enforce it. Like maybe
I'm wrong, but it strikes me as a somewhat tedious
task to go through and say, okay, let me calculate
(26:37):
how many minutes, Like who's going to do that? The
platforms have sort of said they're not going to do that,
so then okay, who is going to do that? And
if it's going to be a nonprofit organization or a
different type of entity, who is paying for this? The
platforms don't seem to want to pay for that, so
is it taxpayers? I just, you know, I feel like
(26:59):
I'm not clear on how these laws are going to
be enforced, and I like the families. I do think
we need laws because there is so much money at
stake and so many considerations about families, children, privacy that
hang in that balance. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
You said earlier about this idea of like generational wealth,
and you have someone has to sort of tend to
the beast to a certain extent, and I just think
it's very interesting. I mean, look at the Kardashians, right,
I mean, they're the most famous version of this. You know,
it's like you look at the new generation of Kardashians,
all of these kids who are now on the shows,
and it's not out of the realm of possibility that
(27:41):
there can be generations of influencers if you do it
for long enough.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Yes, and can I I'm just going to complicate this
even further. So that is a way. I'm glad you're
looking at it. However, they don't own it, these families
who are the early families and early adopters. It's like mortgage.
They don't own the house. They pay the mortgage to
the platform that they're on. So the question of ownership
(28:08):
and who owns the image is a complicated one. You know, France,
for example, has past the law that they don't just
protect the earnings of a child influencer, but they protect
the privacy and any child has the right to say,
I want you to take down this content because I
own my image and I kind of holistically own it.
(28:30):
Denmark has passed a bill where I think it gives
its citizens the right to own their likeness and image
so that they have power over it in online spaces.
One state in the US passed a bill that stipulated
financial protections as well as privacy protections, but that was
just one There's no federal regulation and most of it,
(28:52):
you know, most of the discourse is about the finances.
But I think it's important to add that these families
are making money, yes, and they have money on their
YouTube accounts, and they're growing this legacy for their kids.
But Kyler Fisher told us YouTube keeps fifty percent of
the earnings from a tense, So I don't know if
(29:13):
it's fair to say the families are making sense to
the dollar that YouTube is making for the content the
families produced, but you know, it is a significant portion.
It's sort of you know, like if you're an artist
in a gallery represents you, you probably understand the dynamic.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
YouTube has a lot of the power and just to
financially speak. It reminds me, I mean, you know, and
it is what's interesting to me about people being up
in arms about children's content.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Now, it's not like this is new.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It's just the means of dissemination is newer and more
accessible to more people.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
But you know, I mean, I think of any child actor, right.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
People love to compare kid influencers to child stars. What's
different and what's interesting is not that YouTube is keeping
the earnings. You know, studios owned the likeness, and but
what's interesting is the intimate dimension of family life lived
with social media at the center, and children growing up
in a world where they are living their life or
(30:13):
are they performing their life and they're spending time with
their family, and they're all in this together, and that
part is new and that part is unique, and that
part is not like the child stars. You know, the
families make the point, you know, it's exactly like what
Hollywood used to do, but we do it in our.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Homes, which is very different.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It is very different. And you know, I can see
their points about it having its positives, you know, like
the likelihood of a parent, if it's a good parent
forcing their kids or exhausting their kids is less right
than if you had them on set. But then again,
on set this external kind of infrastructure to safeguard whether
(30:58):
they're getting they're schooling done, you know, set breaks, lunch hours.
You know that, I think we're all uncomfortable on some
level with the fact that that doesn't exist at home.
But then if you think about it, if you're a parent,
who's going to look after your kid better than you?
And so I can understand it, But I, like you
find myself thinking, like, what is it about this that
(31:21):
like draws so many people into watching it? And you know,
clearly there's something happening in our culture that has become
symptomatic to the point that so many people find solace
and find themselves drawn to watching this kind of content.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You almost don't want to see overly edited. You want
to see a family doing the boring family stuff because
in a way, the more privacy, the less interesting I
think it is.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
You know so, But then again, but then again, Kara,
I would counter by saying, I think it's sold to
us as raw and and authentic, but in fact, and
you know, in making the series and observing the way
these parents make content or describe to us their process
of making content. It is kind of calculated. You know.
(32:13):
They're not just filming all day every day. They have
a brand deal, they got a film, they do it
in ten minutes and then they upload it. They see
their numbers, the YouTube rep tells them, is this the
way to go? Or change it? So it's actually like
not that organic, but it's real people. And so I
think the word parasocial is on point and totally right.
(32:34):
But I think we should be wary of accepting that
this is, you know, the reality. And to me, then
that's like the really interesting part. It's like, well, why
am I giving my time, perhaps away from my real
family and life to be watching someone else's family in
(32:54):
life that I believe to be real? But I know
it's perhaps not real. And you know, I think there's
something to be said for is it nice that people
just want to watch families? Like? Are we watching them
in good faith? Because it's nice and comforting and it's
a way to escape the stresses of life, Like is
it escapism? What is it?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Some of it is cuteness, I mean not to be Yeah,
you're right, you know, I think that's it's the same
with dogs and animal content, like I think that stuff
works because it makes people feel It's like a dopamine
hit of cuteness.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
But then it's like interesting, Like Okay, Well, when the
kids are older and if they're teenagers and they don't
want to be cute, they want to be something else,
what happens. I don't say this in like judgment, but like,
if all we're drawn to in this parasocial observance of
social media families and kids is the cute and the
(33:50):
good and the sweet, Like, what does that say about
like our motivations as the viewers to it? You know?
It is there a lack of that in our we
satisfying a lack of it by engaging in viewing this
or are we just sort of avoiding something in our lives?
I don't know, not to get not to get too
(34:12):
introspective or dark.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
No, I wonder I wonder it too. Like what is
ironic is that the thing that is driving our separation
is the thing that we continue to return to, and
it's it really is much easier to open your phone
than it is to open your door. You know, I
think I think for people are very lonely. So just finally,
(34:35):
I mean, you must have had so much footage. Was
there anything that you wish you could have put in
this docuseries that just could didn't make it in?
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Yes, so much. I would have loved to be able
to get at the dangers facing young girls on social media.
That data does exist, and these beauty standards that exist
and are perpetuated. You know, I think we all have
heard the term Instagram face, the crossover of filters onto
(35:05):
plastic surgery tables, where younger girls are getting plastic surgery
to look a certain way due to these beauty standards.
And I think the families and I talked a lot
about that, and the moms talked about that and how
they think about that, And I also would have loved
to be able to get into you know, if this
(35:25):
is the new American dream, it's in response to, I
think a nightmare that many families are facing today of
an inability to provide for their families, inflation, insecurity, and
how the world of social media and families on social media,
and the hierarchies in it and the economic hierarchies in
(35:47):
it mimic and reflect what exists in the real world.
You know, it might sound hyperbolic, but I really think
We're sort of at a crossroads of a new not
just generation of kids growing up on social media, but
a new way of conceiving selfhood. You know, I'm just
dying to know what these kids are going to be
(36:08):
like and what these families are going to be doing
in five years, in fifteen years. So I'm actually pretty
invested in continuing to film. That's the plan.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Oh interesting, Well, this has been so informative, and I
do hope that you get to continue shooting because I
think you're telling a story of what it is like
to be an American family. But I do think it's
these are very formidable businesses and there's a lot of
money being.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Exchanged, and we need more attention to it so that
we can protect these kids. Yeah, and my personal sort
of philosophy and work philosophy is that, especially if something
is taboo, we should be talking about it. We should
not be shying away from difficult conversations. We should be
having them, and I will keep going.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
That's in Neznovacich, the director of the docu series Born
to Be Viral, The Real Lives of Kid Fluencers.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
For Tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I'm Kara Price. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis,
Adrianna Tapia, and Tyler Hill. It was executive produced by
me Ozwaaloshan and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle
Murdoch wrote our theme song. Join us on Friday for
the Week in tech Oz and I will run through
(37:47):
the tech headlines you may have missed. Please rate, review,
and reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast at
gmail dot com.
Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story and Karaen
today you're in the host seat and I meek you
to hear what you got in store.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I am.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
It feels good.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I feel very powerful and get ready. OZ today is
all about kid fluencers.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Kidfluencers, i e. Social media influencers who are under sixteen.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
That's the correct portmanteau kid fluencer. I recently spoke with
Inez Novacik, who's the director of a six part docuseriies
for ABC News called Born to Be Viral, The Real
Lives of kid Fluencers.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
This already caught my eye and when he told me
about it. But the concept of influencers I find one
part fascinating and frankly two parts horrifying.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I think a lot of people would agree with you,
but also some don't. Kidfluencer content is extremely popular and
this will blow your hair back. One of the most
popular kidfluencers on the Internet has one hundred and twenty
nine million YouTube subscribers.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You know, I watched this documentary series a couple of
years ago about Charlie and Dixie Demilio, who, I guess what,
had just grown out of being influencers at the time,
they were probably eighteen and twenty, but had begun their
lives ask influencers and watching the family dynamics and the
pressure and the strain and the money and everything. I mean,
it was really I thought it was a very very
interesting documentary series.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, I mean, clearly this subject elicits really strong opinions,
and that's why Hez set out to paint what I
think is a non judgmental portrait of the lives of
child influencers. She spent over five years following around three
families in the business and documenting their day.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
To day And who are the families.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, I'm going to let.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Her introduce you to all of the families, and the
first one is the Fisher family.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
They are a Mormon family, so a lot of it
is infused by their belief of kind of family values
and the role of the family as a vehicle for
good in the world. So everyone's in the videos, the
whole family. Now, they have five kids and they just
film their regular, every day everything they do.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So here's the Fisher family dressed as the main characters
from The Wizard of Oz on Halloween.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Just looks this is more fun than my childhood.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, I was going to say could your childhood pass
the test of being a kid fluenza?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Absolutely no. I mean there's two parents, both dressed up
looking super happy, and then there are five kids with
some of the best looking costumes I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Another family she spent time with is the McClure family.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Here she is again.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
The McClures are a biracial family. Ammy is an immigrant
from Nigeria. Immy McClure. She's the mom who not only
got into this more accidentally through a video that happened
to go viral, and then they harnessed that virality and
that's allowed them to make a living sharing their kids
(03:07):
and their life on social media. You know how I
used to you all the time.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And you're too young to know.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
The McClure family are more planned in what they do,
so it's kind of like family friendly skits. So you know,
in the series, we we do behind the scenes of
such a video where the dad justin gets dressed up
as Spider Man, So what am I? So they're kind
(03:40):
of like creating many episodes where the family is doing
stuff for their entertainment brand, as they call it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Inez also followed Ethan Rodriguez and his mom, Daisy they.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Are aspiring to build a kid influencer empire and dream
what kind of videos are we going to be doing?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Then? Picnic? You know, I said, what kind of videos
are we going to be doing?
Speaker 4 (04:06):
For this? Tiwn? Okay again, what's up?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Then? When you're holding the camera hold it out like
I didn't, so like you're kind of like so you
can grab yourself, don't move too much?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Okay? Rights me? And they again are an embodiment not
just of this I think allure and follower culture and
this fame kind of culture we have right now, but
also I think that they show a glimpse into the
economic realities facing many Americans today.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
We had some home videos in the Welsh and household
when I was growing up, but they were few and
far between. But I imagine the psychological effects as a
kid of being on the whole time and science perform
when the camera comes out, and also kind of knowing
I guess internally or intuitively that like your performance may
(05:00):
some financial consequences for the families. It reminds me of
a tweet I once saw where somebody Toddler said, don't
forget to subscribe as he was being touched in for
bed because he thought that meant goodbye.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
That's so crazy, good night, mom.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I mean, we think and talk a lot about what
the deluge of social media and content is doing to
kids just by consuming it. But imagine what it's like
to be kind of an active participant in it from
such an early age.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
You know, it's interesting because the docuseries does depict some
of the sinister side of all of this.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
We filmed some things that the families regret doing that
are hard to watch, that ended up with kids being upset,
and then they talk about why they would never do
it again, instead of asking us to just not show it.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Inez says, these are stories of deeply loving families who
are media savvy and who are finding a way to
provide for their kids. So Inez set out to make
a series about family and family life where social media
happens to play a big role, because, in her mind,
the kidfluencer movement evolved from the success of mommy bloggers
in the early twenty tens.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Here's anes the child influencer phenomenon. I think could not
have been built without the mommy influencer and the figure
of the mother. And because I think at the time
when it was going on, it was dismissed by the
serious journalistic powers. The coverage was relegated to sort of
more pop culture dimension, So mommy bloggers were not covered
(06:34):
by Wall Street journal tech reporters in the same way
as like, you know, a Mark Zuckerberg or a startup founder.
It was like, e, these are silly women and they're
doing silly brand deals. And then without realizing it, in
our society, all of a sudden, it seems like, wait,
you know a kid is making twenty five million dollars,
(06:56):
Like what's wrong with our world? These parents are bad?
And I think if we're failing these kids and even
these families, it's because there was such a big gap
of taking it seriously and seeing it as the business
that it was, and seeing it as female founders and
seeing it now as family founders. And I'm not putting
(07:17):
a value judgment saying they're right or they're wrong, or
they're good or they're bad, but I think we did
them a disservice. And now it's sort of like the
train is running without a driver, and now we're all reactionary.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And that's where I wanted to start my conversation with
Inez with how these families considered and addressed the mounting
criticisms of the kidfluencer space. Here's the rest of our conversation.
What are some of the most common criticisms about this
kind of work and how did each family consider those
criticisms and address them.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
No, it's a really important question, and I think what
I loved about doing the series is that, you know,
it always brings strong opinions, and usually it's you know,
either I'm against these families doing this, or you know,
power to them. They're spending time with their families and
making a lot of money. It's the new American dream.
And what the families have said to me, in the
(08:13):
case of the Fishers, they really see it as, Oh,
I'm infusing social media and the interness with images of
a happy family, with cuteness, with a genuine sort of
value system that prizes families and kids. And that's at
(08:34):
a time when a lot of social media focuses on
negativity wars, politics debate. You know, they sort of say,
you want to cast us as bad, like look at
general content, you know, and they say that they welcome
and would welcome any regulation like the parents in the
Fisher family, Madisone and Kyler both gravitated towards Hollywood. Madison
(08:57):
was a child actor and model wanted to make in Hollywood.
So did Kyler. And so they say, you know, if
we could have the same type of framework like what
California offers through the Cougan Law protecting the earnings of children,
we would do that for our kids. And anyway, they say,
we are good parents. We set aside money for our kids,
(09:18):
and we're earning a lot of money that we now
spend on our kids and will continue to And so
they say that for these three reasons, to them and
to others, it should be clear that they are not
exploiting their children. And the McClures similarly, are frustrated that
this backlash against family and child content creators has swept
(09:40):
them up in the same tide. And they are very
confident in the fact of their good parenting style and
their relationship with their kids and the way they do
things to say, you know, categorically, we do not exploit
our children. We raise them well and leave us alone. Basically,
you know, like, why are you trying to paint us
(10:03):
with the same brush as somebody who is exploiting their children,
And so, you know, I think it might seem obvious
to people to cast and lay the blame at the
foot of the parents, right, I think that's sort of
a reflex reaction. It's like, oh, these parents are doing this,
they are bad, and they should be better, they should
be doing something about this. But to me, I think
(10:26):
I look at it from another dimension as well, where
I look at well, why are we not putting that
same blame on the brands that work with these families,
the platforms that host their content, and even the viewers
who empower their existence, Because the only reason this type
(10:47):
of content exists is because there is a demand for us.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Is there any sense of what this type of virality
and pressure has on kids? Like, has there been significant
or meaningful recent search on this?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
The short answer is no, But I will caveat that
by saying it's because this is so new, and I
think kind of like laws are always late to follow
certain trends, it's the same with this type of research.
You know, I when I started out Carara, I was
looking for a specialist, a child psychologist or child psychiatrists
(11:23):
who worked with children influencers to answer that exact question.
There simply wasn't anyone like I. You know, I talked
to a few people who had maybe worked with child
stars or had studied them, or were academics and had
thought about it. But even if you said kid influencers,
they thought teenagers. And I think the term.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Kid influencers no, no, no, ye, these.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Are babies, babies to you know, to age ten. And
so it's shocking to me. I guess that they's still
not research into the impact of social media on young children,
and that even is too general. I would kind of
subhead that and say, okay, well, what is the impact
(12:06):
on the consumerism culture when you start that early with kids?
What is the impact on family ties? What is the
impact on your concept of self and selfhood or on values?
Do these kids understand the difference in themselves, like, you know, neurologically, psychologically,
(12:28):
on filming time being different to family time and privacy,
and so aren't we all somewhat complicit? Is a question
that I kept coming back to in making this series.
You know, I really had to think hard about, you know,
what is my role in all this? And that concern
(12:49):
trickle down into the way we filmed. We filmed with
me and one other person. We filmed where we interview
the kids only for a few minutes at a time
at a time when they said yes. So it would
happen where we'd set up a whole interview, the kids
would come in and then like thirty seconds and they'd
be like, can we just go play? And we're like yeah,
(13:10):
you know, go right right. So I wanted to make
sure that those questions and you know, how are these
kids going to react when they watched this in twenty
years is something that kind of guided the way I
worked throughout making this series.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, I just think, you know, you followed these families
for five years, which is a very long time. I
wonder what changes you noticed throughout this time, and what
were the things that stayed with you about following families
for this long.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
You know, I think five years, on one hand, is
so long, and then on the other hand, I feel
like I would have expected more to change tangibly. But
these kids are still so little, you know, they were
so little when we started filming, and now the oldest
of them are twelve, and so I don't know yet,
(14:04):
and I still don't have the benefit of hide and
sight to be able to say you know, this definitively changed,
But what evolved certainly was their relationship to the work
they were doing, their relationship to social media. And interestingly,
all of the families who we follow at well, I
shouldn't say all the McClure and Fisher families who were
(14:27):
kind of rising in levels of success throughout our filming,
at one point found themselves in the exact same place
of do we give in to trends or do we
stay true to our family? And they both face that question.
So the series tells the story of these families, but
I think also traces the context and the business of
(14:47):
social media as it's evolved over those five years. You know,
the world of social media today is so different to
what it was even when I started researching this in
twenty eighteen and then started filming the year following. So
you've got platforms that are popular today that didn't exist
back then and were kind of irrelevant. You know. The
(15:07):
most obvious one is perhaps TikTok. YouTube was probably where
most of these families would have focused their content, and
then the rise of TikTok created this ripple effect on
other platforms where YouTube started, YouTube shorts, Instagram now has
stories and reels, and it became about short form content.
(15:30):
Short form is king, so the way these families make
money has to change. They're not investing as much time
in filming these old school you know, I say old
school this is like seven years ago, but vlogs at
last for fifteen twenty minutes, where they're not really doing
many cuts, even though they're having maybe some on screen
pop ups to jush up the content. But the way
(15:51):
they're filming now is more strategic, but they're doing more
shorter form content. So things like that have really impacted
the way that these families I think planned for and
plan for monetizing the content that they make.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Did the parents share other motivations or considerations that they
weighed when choosing this path for their kids and their family.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
The parents did talk a lot about not just how
they got into this, but why they maybe wanted to
get into this, and then why they stayed doing it.
And I think that while each story is unique, because
the parents have their own backstory, there's this general question
(16:37):
of am I living through my kids? How do I
think about that? How do I think I'm doing that?
Am I doing it somewhat or to a certain extent.
So there's the financial motives, which is that you can
earn a lot of money doing this, and I think
people still don't realize just how much money you can make.
(16:57):
And I think a lot of families are not necessarily
making millions and millions of dollars. That's just a few
people and the other families aspired to be like them.
But hundreds of thousands of families are making six figures
doing this.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Which is more than they might be making doing something
else exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
And then their motivation also, they've told me, is really
wanting to spend time at home with their kids. So
in a world where if you want to earn a
good living, it is demanding on your time, you're out
of the house, usually two parents working. There's childcare involved.
These parents say that this completely liberates them from those
(17:38):
concerns of missing out on their kids' childhoods, and they
they're with their kids all the time and that is
a huge drole for them. And then you know, in
doing this work, they've realized that the future is social media.
So they see what they're doing as building a legacy,
in their words, for their kids, so their kids will
(17:58):
grow up to be eighteen they will in Harris accounts
with the following of five, ten, fifteen million people, and
then they can do without what they want because that
is real power, even in today's world, and they see
it as only becoming more powerful as time goes on.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
So they're thinking about it as like generational wealth, almost
like a transfer of wealth exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Yes, this is value in today's culture. Currency is attention,
and that attention are those followers and those subscribers who
these children have on their accounts and then can take over,
you know, they can take over their accounts technically when
they're thirteen and the first generation of kids are who
(18:45):
we follow are going to be thirteen in the next
year or so. But more than that, when they're eighteen,
you know, who knows what will happen by then can
that compound? You know? Even the stark difference of the
first interview with Evan alexis where they're talking about, you know,
how many followers you have? They say five hundred million
or one hundred million, and then they say, yeah, because
(19:07):
that's not even a lot of money, right. They don't
like followers of money like they're they're not they're the
same word, like it doesn't matter. And then by the
end of it, they know what a brand deal is,
they know how much money or they think they know
how much money they're making from a brand deal. They
start to understand these concepts, And I really wanted that
(19:28):
to be part of the story too, because they were
so little and even now they're so little, Like now
they literally turned twelve, like a week ago. They're so little.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
One other thing that surprised me is like how much
this work created a vacuum and that some of the
kids decided to be homeschooled so that they could create
more content throughout the day. And you know, the mccler
twins said they wanted to take over the business and
eventually become actresses, and you know, underscores your point of
(20:02):
this being a family business and a source of inherited wealth.
So I'm I'm curious if you made that connection as well.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Yeah, you know, I think in the case of the McClure's,
these kids were very outgoing and before they were even
eleven twelve and saying they wanted to be actresses and
making their own content. They were on red carpets they
like interviewed Steve Corell. They've had opportunities, they wrote a
kid's fashion book. They were always very outgoing kids, so
(20:33):
with them, it didn't surprise me that they would say
something like that. Now, their understanding of it and their
seriousness and conviction in us is something that was I
think nurtured by the fact of kind of growing up
on camera and their parents encouraging them to pursue that.
And I think when they want to be homeschooled and
(20:55):
they want to be actresses, I think it's sort of
like the sum of all those things is the reason why.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
After the break, who are these millions of followers stay
with us? I think what's even more confounding to me
is who the audience is, and that the audience is
so vast for these families, and they're so aware of
(21:32):
their audience, like they're not pushing this into a vacuum.
They're aware that there are people that will consume this content. So,
you know, in making this doc, who did you find
is like the demographic.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
As much as social media and the mechanisms of the
business of these apps evolve, so does the demographic. Because
of course the kids are also growing up, so perhaps
when they're three years old, the main demo are parent
run accounts of kids or family accounts who watch them
for that reason, kids watch kids. That's how Ethan got
(22:03):
into this. He watched Ryan from Ryan's toy review. He
now wants to be a kid influencer. So there's a
child audience in this and a family audience. But then
we filmed with the McClures hosting a birthday party for
their son and they invited their followers and most of
those followers were actually adults, and they were adults who
(22:24):
were watching the twins because they reminded them of their kids.
There was a woman who, you know, jokingly said I
can be your Internet grandma, and you know, said she
watched them for hours a day their family channel because
it reminded her of when she had babies. So they
really can run the gamut because by the end of
(22:46):
the series, the McLure Twins, they just turned twelve, and
when they look at their analytics as we're filming them,
they discover that thirty percent now of their audience is
male ages. You know, maybe twin to forty. I can't
member exactly, but sort of like thirty ish and that
was new, and I think the audience is varied, and
(23:09):
I think for journalists and even for myself as a filmmaker,
it was very hard to get the hard data without
relying on the families sharing with me their insights and analytics,
because these creators, they're actually making content in response to
the insights and analytics that they are seeing on their
dashboards on their back end to say, if this isn't
(23:33):
doing well, you should do this, which is doing well.
And it's not just the families deciding to do this,
they are being encouraged by their quote unquote partners at
these platforms, so that these platforms have a staff of
people tasked with and dedicated to working with these families,
(23:54):
guiding them on what their audience is responding to and
how to adapt in real time. So it's quite a
sophisticated mechanism, and it's how quickly they're able to adapt
to that advice in these trends directly impact how they're
able to earn a living.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah, last episode, you mentioned that as of June twenty
twenty five, several states have passed laws to protect the
earnings of child influencers, but that experts warn that these
regulations could be difficult to enforce. You also mentioned that
popular platforms for YouTube metat TikTok say they have policies
(24:33):
in place to protect minors from abuse, exploitation, and sexualization.
Why give this context to the viewers as they finish
the series? Why is that important?
Speaker 4 (24:44):
I think it's important because it's what comes next, and
it's what I want viewers to think about as they're
walking away from the series. I think it reinforces the
work we tried to do in the story to weave
in the context of social media and public opinion about
children and family creators. And then as we were finishing
(25:07):
filming and finishing editing, some changes happened that I felt
were an important part of that contextual framework. There are
a handful of states that have passed laws to protect
the earnings of child influencers child content creators. However, if
you read what the stipulations are and how they define
(25:29):
is a channel a kid channel? I am skeptical knowing
how hard it was for me, for example, simply to
request firsthand data of who viewers are of this content.
I wonder how we're going to get the data that
breaks down how many minutes per video a child is
featured in to be able to ascertain Okay, does it
(25:53):
qualify as a children's channel? Okay, then it is subject
to having to put a certain amount in savings account
of trust for the child to access at eighteen. You know,
it's sort of the specifics matter. You know, if we're
going to go through the effort to pass these laws
and to celebrate them, we need to ensure that their
(26:15):
enforceability is viable. We need to ensure that they're not
framed in such a way or diluted, perhaps in such
a way that you actually can't enforce it. Like maybe
I'm wrong, but it strikes me as a somewhat tedious
task to go through and say, okay, let me calculate
(26:37):
how many minutes, Like who's going to do that? The
platforms have sort of said they're not going to do that,
so then okay, who is going to do that? And
if it's going to be a nonprofit organization or a
different type of entity, who is paying for this? The
platforms don't seem to want to pay for that, so
is it taxpayers? I just, you know, I feel like
(26:59):
I'm not clear on how these laws are going to
be enforced, and I like the families. I do think
we need laws because there is so much money at
stake and so many considerations about families, children, privacy that
hang in that balance. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
You said earlier about this idea of like generational wealth,
and you have someone has to sort of tend to
the beast to a certain extent, and I just think
it's very interesting. I mean, look at the Kardashians, right,
I mean, they're the most famous version of this. You know,
it's like you look at the new generation of Kardashians,
all of these kids who are now on the shows,
and it's not out of the realm of possibility that
(27:41):
there can be generations of influencers if you do it
for long enough.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Yes, and can I I'm just going to complicate this
even further. So that is a way. I'm glad you're
looking at it. However, they don't own it, these families
who are the early families and early adopters. It's like mortgage.
They don't own the house. They pay the mortgage to
the platform that they're on. So the question of ownership
(28:08):
and who owns the image is a complicated one. You know, France,
for example, has past the law that they don't just
protect the earnings of a child influencer, but they protect
the privacy and any child has the right to say,
I want you to take down this content because I
own my image and I kind of holistically own it.
(28:30):
Denmark has passed a bill where I think it gives
its citizens the right to own their likeness and image
so that they have power over it in online spaces.
One state in the US passed a bill that stipulated
financial protections as well as privacy protections, but that was
just one There's no federal regulation and most of it,
(28:52):
you know, most of the discourse is about the finances.
But I think it's important to add that these families
are making money, yes, and they have money on their
YouTube accounts, and they're growing this legacy for their kids.
But Kyler Fisher told us YouTube keeps fifty percent of
the earnings from a tense, So I don't know if
(29:13):
it's fair to say the families are making sense to
the dollar that YouTube is making for the content the
families produced, but you know, it is a significant portion.
It's sort of you know, like if you're an artist
in a gallery represents you, you probably understand the dynamic.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
YouTube has a lot of the power and just to
financially speak. It reminds me, I mean, you know, and
it is what's interesting to me about people being up
in arms about children's content.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Now, it's not like this is new.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It's just the means of dissemination is newer and more
accessible to more people.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
But you know, I mean, I think of any child actor, right.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
People love to compare kid influencers to child stars. What's
different and what's interesting is not that YouTube is keeping
the earnings. You know, studios owned the likeness, and but
what's interesting is the intimate dimension of family life lived
with social media at the center, and children growing up
in a world where they are living their life or
(30:13):
are they performing their life and they're spending time with
their family, and they're all in this together, and that
part is new and that part is unique, and that
part is not like the child stars. You know, the
families make the point, you know, it's exactly like what
Hollywood used to do, but we do it in our.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Homes, which is very different.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It is very different. And you know, I can see
their points about it having its positives, you know, like
the likelihood of a parent, if it's a good parent
forcing their kids or exhausting their kids is less right
than if you had them on set. But then again,
on set this external kind of infrastructure to safeguard whether
(30:58):
they're getting they're schooling done, you know, set breaks, lunch hours.
You know that, I think we're all uncomfortable on some
level with the fact that that doesn't exist at home.
But then if you think about it, if you're a parent,
who's going to look after your kid better than you?
And so I can understand it, But I, like you
find myself thinking, like, what is it about this that
(31:21):
like draws so many people into watching it? And you know,
clearly there's something happening in our culture that has become
symptomatic to the point that so many people find solace
and find themselves drawn to watching this kind of content.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You almost don't want to see overly edited. You want
to see a family doing the boring family stuff because
in a way, the more privacy, the less interesting I
think it is.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
You know so, But then again, but then again, Kara,
I would counter by saying, I think it's sold to
us as raw and and authentic, but in fact, and
you know, in making the series and observing the way
these parents make content or describe to us their process
of making content. It is kind of calculated. You know.
(32:13):
They're not just filming all day every day. They have
a brand deal, they got a film, they do it
in ten minutes and then they upload it. They see
their numbers, the YouTube rep tells them, is this the
way to go? Or change it? So it's actually like
not that organic, but it's real people. And so I
think the word parasocial is on point and totally right.
(32:34):
But I think we should be wary of accepting that
this is, you know, the reality. And to me, then
that's like the really interesting part. It's like, well, why
am I giving my time, perhaps away from my real
family and life to be watching someone else's family in
(32:54):
life that I believe to be real? But I know
it's perhaps not real. And you know, I think there's
something to be said for is it nice that people
just want to watch families? Like? Are we watching them
in good faith? Because it's nice and comforting and it's
a way to escape the stresses of life, Like is
it escapism? What is it?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Some of it is cuteness, I mean not to be Yeah,
you're right, you know, I think that's it's the same
with dogs and animal content, like I think that stuff
works because it makes people feel It's like a dopamine
hit of cuteness.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
But then it's like interesting, Like Okay, Well, when the
kids are older and if they're teenagers and they don't
want to be cute, they want to be something else,
what happens. I don't say this in like judgment, but like,
if all we're drawn to in this parasocial observance of
social media families and kids is the cute and the
(33:50):
good and the sweet, Like, what does that say about
like our motivations as the viewers to it? You know?
It is there a lack of that in our we
satisfying a lack of it by engaging in viewing this
or are we just sort of avoiding something in our lives?
I don't know, not to get not to get too
(34:12):
introspective or dark.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
No, I wonder I wonder it too. Like what is
ironic is that the thing that is driving our separation
is the thing that we continue to return to, and
it's it really is much easier to open your phone
than it is to open your door. You know, I
think I think for people are very lonely. So just finally,
(34:35):
I mean, you must have had so much footage. Was
there anything that you wish you could have put in
this docuseries that just could didn't make it in?
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Yes, so much. I would have loved to be able
to get at the dangers facing young girls on social media.
That data does exist, and these beauty standards that exist
and are perpetuated. You know, I think we all have
heard the term Instagram face, the crossover of filters onto
(35:05):
plastic surgery tables, where younger girls are getting plastic surgery
to look a certain way due to these beauty standards.
And I think the families and I talked a lot
about that, and the moms talked about that and how
they think about that, And I also would have loved
to be able to get into you know, if this
(35:25):
is the new American dream, it's in response to, I
think a nightmare that many families are facing today of
an inability to provide for their families, inflation, insecurity, and
how the world of social media and families on social media,
and the hierarchies in it and the economic hierarchies in
(35:47):
it mimic and reflect what exists in the real world.
You know, it might sound hyperbolic, but I really think
We're sort of at a crossroads of a new not
just generation of kids growing up on social media, but
a new way of conceiving selfhood. You know, I'm just
dying to know what these kids are going to be
(36:08):
like and what these families are going to be doing
in five years, in fifteen years. So I'm actually pretty
invested in continuing to film. That's the plan.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Oh interesting, Well, this has been so informative, and I
do hope that you get to continue shooting because I
think you're telling a story of what it is like
to be an American family. But I do think it's
these are very formidable businesses and there's a lot of
money being.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Exchanged, and we need more attention to it so that
we can protect these kids. Yeah, and my personal sort
of philosophy and work philosophy is that, especially if something
is taboo, we should be talking about it. We should
not be shying away from difficult conversations. We should be
having them, and I will keep going.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
That's in Neznovacich, the director of the docu series Born
to Be Viral, The Real Lives of Kid Fluencers.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
For Tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I'm Kara Price. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis,
Adrianna Tapia, and Tyler Hill. It was executive produced by
me Ozwaaloshan and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle
Murdoch wrote our theme song. Join us on Friday for
the Week in tech Oz and I will run through
(37:47):
the tech headlines you may have missed. Please rate, review,
and reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast at
gmail dot com.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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