Child Influencers & Social Media. Child Exploitation in Digital age

The children we see on social media with millions of followers. It seems cute and innocent but there are some serious issues with the concept.

An entry by Sana Ghayas and Sehrish Sarosh Haider

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

What’s a child Influencer? What do they do on social media? The children who post entertaining, informative and inspiring content online on multiple social media platforms and manage to build large numbers of audiences. Their accounts are often run by their parents and are earning money for sponsored content. It’s asstonishing to find that they are as young as 0-9 months to 13 years of age.

Apparently these kids are just utilizing these platforms for showcasing their talents, leisure and socialization but this is not the sole truth. These young cyberfluencers have millions of followers and subscribers based on their striking persuasion skills. The children of the digital age are themselves audiences and creators. Understanding this dynamic characteristic, many big platforms provide children to have access and contribution facilities like Youtube Kids allow children under 13 to create an own account and Amazon enables children under 13 to upload their own reviews which are marked as “A kid’s review”. Beside that, it is not difficult to create accounts with false age information on any social media platform.

Social Media Child Influencer, a new source in advertising?

In this bubble where kids are both protagonists and recipients who can generate electronic word of mouth (eWOM), the advertising companies and brands have already discovered the potential of these mini players with large reach as effective and direct advertising space to outstretch young target audiences. As they seem like relatable role models and peers, it’s easily assumed that they  have no commercial interest and are perceived as authentic and credible sources of information. Not just by kids but they are not even strictly monitored or criticized by parents. In turn, it increases the brand’s visibility and awareness and has been shown to positively affect children’s product’s sales (Bao et al., 2019).

In 2019, from social media advertising and  paid partnership, $8 billion earned by children with large social media following and upto $26 million generated per year by highly successful children. Kids with one million followers or more can earn $10,000 or more per sponsored post. These kids are already successful in scoring positions on Forbes magazine’s list of top influencers.

Featured Content in Sponsored Vlogs

 These children often review toys, play games, sing and dance or just talk.Whereas, some are cooking, doing makeup or they are posing for pictures in fashionable outfits or in costumes. They tended to be much more varied and used more everyday language compared to professionals (e.g. EvanTubeHD), yet they seek to mimic adult and professional videos, including their production and branding strategies which leads to one of the major problematic issues with these mini influencers as some of them are talking about topics mature for their age and behaving like adults and doing inappropriate activities.

It leads to potential negative impact on audience children, by watching relatable but wrong role models like wrong perceptions about life specifically about fun and playing, or urge to be successful or adopting unrealistic or  lifestyles, a research on Impact of social media influencer marketing on children’s food intake by Coates et al., 2019, suggested promotion of healthy or unhealthy snacks, directly or  indirectly during vlogs showed marketing of unhealthy foods increased audience children’s immediate food intake, whereas the equivalent marketing of healthy foods had no effect.

The Exploitation Issues with Child Influencers

 There are several risks of exploitation such as psychological and physical and even financial in the long term. Because it lies in the grey zone and there is a lot of blurr either its playing or work. Especially for the kids who are famous influencers they could have increased productivity pressure to keep the audience, enforcing gender stereotyping as mostly boys unboxed and assembled toy cars and legos and talk about video games, whereas girls tended to unbox dolls, talk about decorations and makeup, another important aspect is online backlash and bullying faced by these kids, which further leads to risk of not just  misuse of their content but to the phedophilias related concerns. On the other hand, there is potential deprivation of necessary opportunities like missing out school, proper health and rest, absence of consent being kids, lack of privacy by posting everyday life and routine, risk of protection due to presence of private information publicly.

There are dangers that children are under when they are available online for everyone to see. As these children grow old and use social media on their own they might be prone to trusting all the people who appreciate them online. Things such as becoming a victim of pedophiles or of people who generally have malicious intentions. Especially when their whole life is online.

Children’s rights, child labour the Role of Parents:

Many believe that the moment children start earning it becomes child labour. Moreover, on social media the parents are shooting their kids for sponsorships and other paid advertisements and since it is just the parents there is no way to know if a child is being overworked or if their studies are being affected.

If a child is making millions and paying the bills of the house since many parents quit their job to manage their child’s social media career. It’s essentially a dilemma for parents. Children are often pressured to keep creating new videos in order to keep their following on social media. Moreover, they are also in the public eye constantly and there is a chance that people are going to recognize minors in public and want to talk to them or meet them. Which not only added pressure but also put children at unnecessary risk by letting them meet strangers.

Legislation and policy

Cogan’s law was one of the first laws that was made to protect child actors in the future. Child actor Jackie Cogan was an actor in the 1920s who worked with Charlie Chaplin. When he grew up he found out that his mother who was also his manager spent his millions on herself and he filed a lawsuit against her once he turned 21. While the Cogan’s law had many flaws, it does tell us that when money is involved parents cannot always be trusted.

When it comes to legislation and policy regarding child influencers on social media, there is a general lack of it. In Germany children aged 6-15 are allowed to work 30 calendar days for three hours each day. France has recently introduced a law that all the money a child under 16 is legally protected

The need for proper legislation for children is very much needed especially with regards to what they earn and how much they are working while at home.

Conclusion

Moving forward we need proper rules and regulations not only in countries but also on social media platforms. Parents do reserve the right to put their child on social media but if that starts influencing the child’s mental health or affects his or her education there should be a line.