In the age of social media everything we do is posted online, there are reports of the risks that social media poses to influencers lives. However, we need to keep in mind that most influencers are over the age of 18 and therefore know what they are signing themselves up for.
What’s not often considered is the children who become influencers. Family influencers are a brand of influencer who share their lives via social media through their point of view as parents.
These children are pushed into this life with every moment being documented before they are 18, putting them at risk to predators and other harms of social media.
Some parents share highly personal and often inappropriate images of their children online and they profit from it. In some cases, it is their main source of income therefore the parents exploiting their child for money.
The mental health of the children exposed to the criticism of social media can also be impacted.
Piper Rockelle is an example of this; Netflix even made a documentary called “Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing” about the exploitation of Piper and her friends.
Piper was only eight when she began posting on social media, she’s spent the last 10 years of her life being scrutinised, sexualised and exploited.
The reason I say exploited is because Piper was filming with content creators from OnlyFans before she had turned 18 and was uploading videos to the platform on the date of her 18th birthday.
The comments on all of Piper’s content are judging and commenting on her body. Imagine someone talking about you or someone you know like this, it makes me feel sick.
Whilst I do admit that some videos of children are quite entertaining (kid fails videos), I don’t believe that it is appropriate for parents to be profiting off of children who are unable to consent to their lives being shown on social media.
Not to mention the effects that it could potentially have on their mental health and self-esteem and their futures.
Posting your children on the internet should be a crime.
Debbie Choo 
Bethany Miguel 
Tarkyn Sharples
This is a fantastic critique on the child influencer economy and its predatory problems. The documentary about how awful the exploitation of Piper was is kind of ironic – the documentary is treating her as a subject to view and scrutinise, too. I wonder how the social media bans sweeping the globe will affect behaviour like this. Did you hear about Piper intially through Netflix, her new Instagram, or her childhood influencer status?