not a kidfluencer, but as a pastor's kid i find scary how similar the outcome is. kids with WAY too much pressure over them, end up feeling like a failure and depressed or axious overachievers. my father once told me "my job depends on how you behave" because the whole church were watching us as a family. it might be just me projecting, but i think there are some similarities, but maybe a topic for a different podcast lol.

best part about fridays!

As an adult who works in media, these videos are revelatory. Thank you for sharing this information with us all.

As someone who works for an anti-trafficking organization (including online trafficking of children), it is scary to hear the similarities between stories I hear at work of exploitation of children and THIS! Never thought of it, but we definitely need to be pushing for more protection/legislation here.

In some countries like Germany there are strict laws around posting minors on social media that I honestly think we should look at as an example of how to do it.

The girls is Dance Moms literally said that word for word. They dissociated to keep going.

This is why I don’t share images of my children online. This is heartbreaking knowing so many children have their lives shared online without the knowledge (infants). Thank you for sharing this Alyson!

My mother always insisted we stayed offline. No youtube channels, even if they were small and silly, no baby pictures on Facebook, no newspaper articles for school or church events. It used to really get on my nerves when everyone else was allowed a Facebook account except me, but honestly these days, I'm grateful for it. I grew up safe

Such a sad time that when these kids grow up they have this toxic space and memories to look back on and not have a “normal” fun filled and creative childhood 😔 breaks my heart! We can do better! Let these kids have a happy childhood!

all children deserve to grow up safe & protected & I'm so grateful for your channel, shedding light on something so prevalent 🙏

You’re such a wonderful storyteller. I always look forward to Fridays :)

thank you for talking about this. it scares and worries me so much to see how much family vloggers and kid-fluencers have exploded over the years. i just think about how these kids must be feeling doing all this work. the mental health, the bodily exhaustion. the pressure and expectations being set by their parents to make sure they get views and sponsers. how the kids on family vlog channels are having their most intimate childhood moments filmed for the world to see... including their peers who they go to school with. many of these kids are bullied and don't have friends because of it. you also have no clue what could be going on behind the scenes when the cameras are off. i mean, just look at what has happened with the 8 passengers kids. it's horrific and heart breaking, and they aren't the only family channel to have had abuse going on behind the scenes AND on camera. i'm not a mom, but i do have two nephews, and my little sister is about to have her first child. i'd do anything to protect them from this scary, predator filled, online world.

First, props for the High School Musical references 😂 Artificial Intelligence frankly terrifies me, as well as the ability to do "deep fakes" where you can use someone's image and voice to make it appear they have done or at least been videoed doing something they never did. I fear gov't or other entities that would take advantage of people, and kids especially are vulnerable to this.

I would love to see guests on this podcast in the future!! :) Keep speaking up, Alyson we’re all rooting for you!! 🥰❤️

I'm actually working on my thesis right now and my topic is "Children of influencers and their relationship to publicity and privacy". You're perspective on kidfluencers is really interesting and your video showed really well where the research in that area is headed: proposals for more and better laws to protect the children, works about how context collapse and time collapse on social media affect childrena and teens transitioning into adulthood, media-based self-staging, etc. The field itself is not that big but you can see that it has grown a lot in the last few years and maybe the new findings in science will help to bring awareness to the broad masses. At least that is something I hope to accomplish with my work.

I have a lot of respect for influencers who are now having children and choosing not to show them. I’m not an influencer but I think we all can still learn from that. Kids learn from their parents, and teaching children how to interact and live in a digital era starts with the parents. If mom respects me enough to not post vulnerable baby pics of me on Facebook, then maybe I’ll learn to respect myself and know not to post vulnerable pics of myself when I get older. If mom and dad respect my privacy and show the importance of individual and family privacy on social media. Then I will have that foundation when I come to the age where I want to have my own account. Even “regular” kids are often having their whole childhood displayed all over Facebook for everyone to see. I’m glad that my parents respected that line for me as a child and now as an adult I can feel good about the fact that if I went for an interview or if someone just googled my name they wouldn’t be able to find my whole childhood. I hope I can offer that and be an example of that to my children one day.

Shreya! I wanna cry im so proud of this teenager i dont know

The hsm puns at the end 🤣 thank you for your insight every week!

Underage Undercover is SUCH a good show... I work in the DV/SV field as an educator and I'm so glad you're talking about online grooming, especially within this lens...

I was in the middle of the HSM dance triggered by you saying "we're all in this together" only to lose my mind when you followed up with "we're breaking free."

this is SO necessary for people to hear

As a former child actor who was abused and used in child sex abuse material, I have veryyyyy mixed feelings on AI. On the one hand, I think it could do so much good in replacing child actors in particularly distressing scenes. On the other hand, I am way to familiar with the most vile people in the world, and I know that they'll also take advantage of it.

I just absolutely love you. I thank God for you, Alyson. Thank you for speaking out. I'm so proud of you!

I love this series, i would love if every chapter would be longer

On the topic of family channels, I still think it’s so crazy that some of these kids become their parents content literally the moment they’re born. What happens when they get older and their parents eventually stop filming everything?

You are truly doing a service to the world with this series. Keep up the good work, Alyson.

I hear your HSM references in your conclusion lol

Yeah i would never want my child to be shown online, its so damaging

Another great episode. I was sort of surprised that only one state has any laws protecting kidfluencers but also not given how the law always lags behind cultural changes. Really looking forward to hearing about the psychological impacts of fame next week

I see your high school musical reference, I see you ❤❤❤

I will admit I used to watch a couple of different family vlog channels who shared their children all the time. At the time I never thought much of it. It wasn’t until I came across reddit threads about certain families and saw so many horrible and disgusting comments attacking these families especially the kids, that it made me step back and realise the impact. I made the decision that I didn’t want to follow family vloggers, family based influencers, kid influencers etc anymore. I also didn’t want to really follow people who excessively shared their kids online and I have definitely noticed a much bigger increase in people who choose not to share their kids, have stopped sharing them or who blur their faces or only post photos where angle is very specific and their kids face isn’t visible. While it’s cute to see the kids as they grow and some people do have good intentions and aren’t creeps, it makes me sick to think about the other side because unfortunately there is a lot of horrible people out there. At the end of the day, kids don’t understand the impact of having an online presence especially a public presence. Kids don’t understand how it could and can affect them in later life. And I personally don’t think it’s fair for kids to grow up being known on the internet and having their every move documented for the whole world to see with the click of a button. It was bad enough child actors growing up being recognised in public and I don’t even want to imagine what that is like, but now it’s even bigger? Now it’s so many more kids who could face the same struggles that you’ve discussed here. The thought honestly makes me sick. I wish I could boycott family vloggers. I know alot probably think they’re doing the right thing and making money for their family and whatever but is it really worth it? What about privacy? What about safety? Even the ones who think they’re being safe and smart online, who’s to say their private information couldn’t get leaked any time? Who’s to say someone isn’t watching their content and going out of their way to take any information they can possibly get and file it away. I would like to think that by choosing not to follow kidfluencers, family channels etc and not engage with that type of content, I am doing my very small part in not feeding the problem. Does it fix it? Of course not, but it’s a start.

The more I listen to this podcast, the less I want to bop to the top.

i remember how embarrassed i was, when my parents friends, and my own friends saw older pictures of me - maybe as a tiny kid, in a diaper or something, and i felt that was a personal photo. it was shared with these relatively few people. but it was not fun for me. then i think - what if i was shared to the internet without my consent and even really knowing, understanding it - and having a lot of private moments shared. the horror of realizing this when you are older. it would crush me. and yet, there are so so so many kids realizing they were shared for the whole world to see on social media. it must have huge impact on them. i don't believe ALL parents share bc of some selfish narcissistic reason. some share, because they feel like they miss ATTENTION. ooooh attention. we cannot go without right? everything is being shared. this now then goes for your baby as well. and the parents may not realize this is not like all the other PERSONAL choices you make. what to share and not. YES this is *your* baby, but it a human baby. a real person. who should have a say, and WILL have opinions on what you've done once they realize it. people are just really selfish and want constant validation. even if it hurts their kid.

Great as always, Alyson - I’m curious though what role the platform itself should play in segregating minors’ accounts from adult accounts to prevent predatory (whether sexually or mentally predatory, including shaming or bullying) or grooming behavior? Frankly, if you’re of legal age, you shouldn’t have access to the inbox of someone underage. And to some extent the only entity that can prevent that access is the platform. You may touch on this next week, but platforms should be provided far fewer liability shields under the law. They need to be held accountable for protecting vulnerable users on their platforms.

I look forward to watch your episodes every Friday! You do an amazing job and you’re so well-spoken

Great Vid! I really appriciate this series, very informational. also I caught that High School Musical reference at the end, very well done.

I'm learning so much!

I have always been a little concerned about Kidfluencing. I appreciate you also taking a moment to recognize the parents who have tried to make sure their kids got their share of the money when they are adults, and more importantly the parents who did watch out for their mental wellbeing. I am interested to learn more about the inside of fame on the next one too. I admit I was one of those teenagers that was starry eyed in the light of fame and hoped to become an actress and singer. My parents would not really let me pursue it which in the end they were of course looking out for me. I think they also not only didn't want me in the spotlight, they didn't want to be in the spotlight at all themselves. But yes I was that teen that had the subscription to M Magazine and every month I eagerly awaited the next issue, and had posters from the magazines plastered all over my walls. From Camp Rock of course, to Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana posters, Jonas Brothers, High School Musical, the Sprouse Twins and so on! Pretty much every Disney Star of that golden Disney channel age. I do still LOVE acting and singing, I have always been passionate about it but certainly learned a WHOLE lot about the industry since I was a teenager.

I think the use of AI in place of child actors could be super useful when filming scenes that would be distressing to kids to have to preform. Like horror movies that often have kids. I'm sure there's a lot in place already to try to not traumatise these kids, but if they could just be taken out of the equation all together when it comes to things that kids shouldn't witness or take part in then that would definitely be a positive use of AI

just commenting for the algorithm.

so excited to be a part of this conversation every week 💗

This is such an important topic to bring to light.

I have to wonder who the kidfluencer "Alyson" will be. The one who draws our attention to the whole industry and shows us the underbelly of it. And the one who wants to change it. Thanks for your work, Alyson. It's so enlightening and well done. Looking forward to the future!

Just scanning the comments to see if anyone else caught the double HSM bit at the end.

I love this series

I feel like these videos should be getting way more traction. KZfaq algorithm really sucks.

Okay now I KNOW Alyson and I are the same person! I got a little giddy when you mentioned you watch Undercover Underage too! I appreciate that someone else is saying what I've been thinking and ruminating in my head for months. I had a KZfaqr I used to watch raise their kids only to find out they partook in grooming and I lost all trust and faith in them. I looked up to them and it broke my heart. I am cautious about the amount of child included content I see on tiktok and KZfaq now. It just gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach. 😥 I think the AI being used could be an interesting alternative for child advertising but I still think there should be guidelines in place for age and messaging in advertisements and content for kids.

As a former child actor who also grew up as a teen/20-something with the toxicity of social media... I'd say being a 'kidfluencer' is the most awful career path imagineable. Employed without real awareness, selling plastic and doomed to feel like an irrelevant hasbeen before teenagedom.... at least, without immaculate parenting, but immaculate parents dont monetise their children, especially into something so artless and empty.

This is soo good!

I always look forward to these!

I’ve considered this for almost a decade, and I think requiring nearly every penny generated to go into a protected trust on any account where the image/voice of a child ever appears is the best way to discourage the worst exploitation. If parents can’t get rich, most won’t do it. And if they do, the child will have a fund to pay for lifelong psychiatric support. This, in combination with a weekly visit to an approved child psychologist to give permission for the child to film each week. If the child isn’t willing or able, they can’t participate that week by law. Education needs to be the goal for the average parent unknowingly making their child vulnerable by plastering content of them simply for a$$ pats. I will always remember an image of a sick child posted online, only to be used as an unknowing model for a child-$ex-doll sold on Amazon. Maybe we can require some sort of registration of users on channels with children on SM? So anonymous viewers of children aren’t allowed, and police can immediately have a list of their “admirers”?

"Or are we all in this together?… don't worry, next week, we're breaking free"😌…FAAAAALLING FLY~~~~ING♪︎

alyson, this is excellent content. would you be willing to provide some talking points to include to legislators in the notes we ALL can write?

Great vlog, Alyson! it's concerning seeing channels with young kids/teens and I wonder how that social media presence will affect them when they're older. Like, when they go to college or apply for jobs, go on interviews, will they be viewed always as their online persona and not viewed as an individual for people to get to know in real life?

In response to that end note, I think AI could be used positively to take kids out of situations that might be traumatizing while still being able to “get the shot” On the other hand though, AI could easily be abused to put kids into contexts that affect their experience and brand outside the content, which could be really negative for development and mental health. I feel like that would need proper legislation and discretion to use correctly in a way that works well for everyone involved.

Thank you! Great to continue the story

I’m older and kids don’t realize potential colleges/jobs will search their social media profiles.

i love your podcast/series

On one hand, using AI to replace actual kids in certain scary or upsetting scenes could be really positive for the kids, but I can picture adults still treating the child actor as though they had acted those scenes, so they might have a similar disconnect of being treated like they were their character. I'm not sure! Thanks for this episode!

Another amazing video, Alyson. You are so spot on in articulating the issues within hollywood. Keep it up! I always look forward to these.

not the HSM references 😂

my boyfriend works all day on fridays & i’ve struggled to occupy myself while he’s gone, this podcast has been my friday tradition ever since it started 💗 gives me something to think about

Thank you for all this excellent, eloquent, thoughtful and critical thinking and problem solving questions! Keep up the excellent work! Yes, Fame, so much we don't know about it from an outsider and fan experience of it than being in the entertainment industry. "Can we claim to be innocent bystanders or are we all in this together?" "Don't worry next week, we're breaking free" So many wonderful millennial puns in all your episodes. Thank you for the original HSM DCOM puns!

Strong Disney outro 😂

I think if we could pay a kid to use their likeness temporarily in say a scary movie-so the adult acts out the scenes and they replace them with the kid, like AI meets mo-cap that would be great: the kid gets compensated but not traumatized

Educational 🙂

I keep thinking of the LaBrant family during this

As we now see with the recent arrest of kidfluencer’s mom! (8 Passengers)

How would we got about reaching out to state officials about these things?

I’m a TikTok creator and my kids BEG me to let them online. My youngest just turned 8 and it shocks me how many of their friends have social media. I don’t get how any parent whose online as often as these influencers could do that to their kids.

Very interesting

Thanks.

wooohooo!!

Please start the next video with a HSM reference. ❤

Alyson, in no way do I say this with an accusatory tone. But how do you view using footage/picture including children. I notice in your videos you use stock footage of children. This whole podcast is about protecting children on screen. How are you ensuring the children you show in the stock footage are being protected in the correct way? Where does the line draw for you? Im curious to know if you're turning your thoughts into action.

Thank you.

Okay, Marcia Clark!

I feel like using AI to replace children in media is such a broad topic that it's hard to give a solid opinion on it as a whole. I think what people say about using it for things like horror films or other movies make sense, especially since those are industries where there's a lot more oversight. I would be reticent to use any kind of AI to replicate people in social media because then it becomes hard to tell if what you're watching is real. For instance, an organization or group could market itself as AI while still exploiting real children in order to bypass legal protections, or it could increase the available content for predators without any way to legally fight against it

Hey, I’ve been there. I had to ask someone what that kind of foam is called because I forgot the name…. Memory foam. It was LITERALLY memory foam and I forgot the name. 😂

Love the show ❤

How can these publicly owned companies proof their due diligence to their investors that these kids are safe and not exploited? Or is there not such a law for American public companies? Where you need to have done anything in your legal power to circumvent any human exploitation. If here in Europe you somehow omitted something in your due diligence process and a person has been exploited for your gain, hefty fines are on the horizon. Even criminal charges can loom in circumstances.

I don't think children should be in live action media at all and that children's media should be animated as much as possible so that they can still get stories relevant to them but without a sacrificial lamb (child actor). Child acting should be limited to school theatre programs imo.

I'm curious about whether you've ever looked into the idea of family abolitionism as it regards the autonomy as children. It's the idea that the structures of the nuclear family is determined as the ultimate form of love and care and culture and government materially restricts all other forms of mutual care. The result is that abuse is more pervasive and harder to escape from. I think it's an idea that intertwines pretty significantly with a lot of the structures you describe and the lack of protection for children is also the lack of autonomy for children.

Interesting that it seems like a lot of actors aren’t allowing their kids to have tech or get into Hollywood

9:04 This was Ohio ahhhhh!!!!!!

after ab 10 seconds of thought ab ur ai question: use kids to do motion capture, but use ai to replace their face. kids could still work on sets (ofc w improved labor laws) but would not be subject to the public eye

re. AI coming from a country with a smaller entertainment industry where normal kids act on TV (i took part myself in some reality TV stuff) and continue to have entirely normal lives - the main Hollywood and digital element that stands out to me is the dysfunction of a child becoming a celebrity, and crossing those work boundaries of allowing the public into the personal before they're old/developed/mature enough to have the ability to consent the fact that literal children are interviewed personally as a part of marketing a project is scary to me, and the digital work feels like that on steroids, it creeps me out that we've normalised it i remember when the discussion around deepfakes began years ago, it crossed my mind that this type of tech has the potential to be used to protect the identity of children working in large scale entertainment, i.e. to have a real child play the part, but digitally edit recognisable features to maintain privacy and retain a degree of choice in remaining in the industry or stepping away, and create a protective persona (fake name, face appearance) so they're still paid and credited but private it obviously has the potential to get really dark, really fast, and i don't exactly trust people not to treat it like a game to try to figure out who the kid is, and have no idea what the psychological impact might be with not being able to recognise yourself on screen etc etc, but i do wonder if better educated people could figure out suitable parameters

Been listening on Spotify but the videos are pretty nice, I might switch over to watching instead. You mention AI at the end, and how that might be used positively and negatively in relation to kids, and that reminded me of a case I heard about recently. In Brazil (where I'm from), there were some late elementary/ middle school boys who got regular pictures of several female classmates from social media, ran them through an AI, which generated p*rnographic images of those underage girls, and then shared those images on Whatsapp with all their friends and other boys in big group chats. Only ONE of the boys who saw these fake pictures told his parents about it so they could report it to the authorities and try to get them removed, although I'm not even sure if he knew exactly who was responsible at that point. This is only one example of the many ways unmonitored access to the internet and AI can be problematic when it comes to kids and teens, but in this case, it was broadly discussed as a consequence of sexism and toxic masculinity still being extremely prevalent in Brazil. Boys are taught by society that women are essentially objects that exist to be sexualized and that this type of thing is funny to share with friends. I don't know the specific context of this case, but there were probably many other kids who were uncomfortable seeing this and did not think it was ok, but who were scared to speak out because they might be ostracised and bullied by the others at school and be called gay or something (which is still a big taboo in many places and contexts in Brazil). Teens using AI to alter their appearance into something that is considered more attractive is problematic enough, from a psychological perspective, but it's very unsettling to think that there are AI tools nowadays that can easily create child p*rn and things like that.

In my opinion, a kid under 16 should NOT be working, at least not more than 2/3 days a week in a low responsibility job. I think one of the biggest reasons why this is such a phenomenon is that we don't see entertainers as workers, but as peope that are just "having fun". As a musician, I can't count the amount of times I've been asked to randomly sing without any preparation because I "have such a good voice". Well, thank you, Mary, but I'm not here for your entertainment. I'm not here to work. If entertainment is labour, then kidfluencing/acting as a child is child labour, and that's just very 18th century isn't it? As to parents posting their children, well that should just be illegal. Just like sex: if the child is under 10 years old (or whatever age is appropriate), they cannot consent to content filmed in a domestic setting being posted on the internet. Hard to legislate, but that would be my starting point.

I know this is different but I have a friend who posts multiple photos of her daughter every single day on Facebook and I understand being proud of having a child of your own, but I don’t think she should post that many photos of her daughter.

What is with foster parents showing I’m surprised that states allow that I think that it’s different once they are adopted because that child’s guardian also they should set up trust funds for each kid because that’s their money they made.

I think AI could provide a lot of creative benefits to protecting children. One concern I have is how a studio might base the AI on a real child, and therefore own a child's likeness and be permitted to do anything they like with it. Would a studio feel its okay to stretch the moral limits of horror or depravity with children characters because its not a real person acting it? Furthermore, while not having a child actor do the scene protects that one person, or may even shape the industry, it doesn't protect viewers from witnessing a 'child' go through something. What viewers consume may not change, or may not change for the better. I think as consumers we need to consider how child media affects our relationship or understanding of children.

I am subscribed to a channel on youtube about a man, his wife, and now kid, who live in Tokyo Japan. The wife is from Japan and the youtuber was vlogging his life there for a while, he got married to his wife, and then they had a kid. His channel focuses on daily life in Japan and what it is like. He is phenomenal at what he does. His wife is the behind the scenes person who helps edit and do other things. They have a studio for work that they just got. He has a separate channel where he will vlogg life updates and other things where his kid is involved. While I don't believe that the child is being harmed, and the parents have not malicious intent, I wonder what their son will think about this later on when he is grown up. Strangers saying he is cute and love his shirt to the creepy ones who want way worse. I can say the parents seem to be good at shutting down the creepy aspects of the comments, but you can't get all of it. Really making me stop and think Alyson!

What documentary were you referencing around 5:00?

I would love to see an episode on AI whether you talk about it in the context of kid actors or adult actors. There has obviously been lots of discourse surrounding the topic since it was such a big contention point either the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, but I haven’t seen much about its use with kids. I’m no expert, so I can’t speak to how it might be a positive or negative impact when used by production studios, but I do think it has the potential to cause damage to non-actor kids in day-to-day life. The insane deepfake technology could fairly easily create a video that looks like someone is doing something that they did not do or saying something they did not say. I think AI is a tool that can do some pretty incredible things, but it is a tool that needs to be regulated and used wisely. It can do just as much harm as it can help.

And then with AI you're giving companies the right to that kid's likeness, likely in perpetuity cause they're unlikely to sign for less and parents who are not aware of this new universe are probably willing to sign it. And that takes away kids' control over their own image even more and I imagine it creates a wider disconnect between the person you are and the person you see on screen, especially if we're talking younger kids who have it harder to separate the two and who will grow up unsure if they really did that or it was AI. And then it's inevitably gonna affect older actors cause if you have the rights to a kid's likeness and are able to digitally alter it what's stopping you from just digitally aging them and doing away with actors all together? Which is what sag-aftra was fighting against.

Wait... what about The Coogan Law? Isn't it even worth a historical reference or is it really that fully forgotten?

I’m a few episodes behind but wanted to post this on a more recent episode in the hopes that it’s seen and if you’ve answered it previously sorry if you’re repeating yourself and I apologize if it’s triggering. Do you still dance? I know you said acting is very traumatic but your were (or are) a fabulous dancer and if you do are you doing it for the joy of it, is it a personal escape or as a profession?

🤢

Replacing kid actors with AI sounds like a terrible idea. What is the big difference between Adult and kid actors? No one asked for automated. mimicked art. Smdh.