Keeping kids safe as an influencer

SBS Australia

2 days ago

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TRANSCRIPT
Sean: As someone listening, you should literally be thinking, so the founder of TikTok, the founders of Instagram, the founders of Meta, they don't want their children to have the platforms and you are comfortable giving them to your kids.
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SB: Social media is complex. Some say without it, they would never have found their community. Others warn it's addictive and a platform for misinformation and bullying. Either way, it's become embedded in everyday life … with people now using it as a way to make an income.
Sean Szeps is one of them. He's a content creator working in the online parenting space. Raising twins with his husband, Sean makes Instagram reels about what he describes as the rude reality of parenting.
I'm Sophie Bennett and in this episode of The Beta Blueprint, Sean shares how he navigates the complexities that come with sharing your life online.
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SB: Thanks for joining me Sean. So, how long have you been working in social media?
I have been working in the social media industry for 15 years. My very first job in the social space was in 2011, kind of as a community manager at the very bottom of the industry. And I was able to climb the ladders all the way up to being the head of social and digital at an advertising agency. My Instagram grew with popularity. When my children were born, I was showing my life as so many people do and posting pictures. And because my family is a unique modern family, me and my husband had children via surrogacy. That was obviously compelling to people on the internet. And so the audience grew and when the audience got large enough that, that became more financially viable as a job than the career I had dedicated a decade to. I walked away from advertising and now I am a full-time content creator in the parenting space.
SB: Yeah wow, did you imagine that's where your career would head?
Yeah, I was at school literally studying at uni when social media courses began to become integrated into communication degrees. And my mum actually called me and was like, this thing, this social media thing, it's going to be big. And so I started taking courses as soon as I graduated. I was one of the very, very first generation of people who had a degree where they had actually studied it, and so I was able to transition right into the workforce.
SB: So you've been working in the space since 2011 - how has it changed since then?
I have always worked, like one of my specialties back in the day was working with bloggers and I think that's probably the biggest transformation is watching the power shift away from traditional media, huge big budgets that were going towards TVC campaigns and radio advertisements and traditional billboards or magazines. And then slowly but surely year after year, the power shifting to these bloggers who then became what we now think of as modern day influencers, to really look at the infancy of that industry where you would give someone $50, you would not ask them what they were going to shoot, you would not give them a brief, it was literally just like, here, do your thing over there, you weird influencers. And now 15 years later, the power that they hold and the fact that brands really think of them that entire industry as a deeper connection to their potential customer. I think that's probably the biggest shift I've always noticed is this very unimportant person becomes, not only did they become very important, but it became my livelihood.
SB: And just on that, how was that transition from managing brands to becoming the face in front of the camera?
I'm really lucky, I think because the majority of people who become content creators or influencers for a living, they trip into it. Maybe they do have aspirations of stardom as an actor or as a comedian, but a lot of people who become influential, it's not something that you can predict. You either have je ne sais quoi or you don't. People are either interested in you or they're not. But for me, because I started my whole career on the other side of the camera, I really feel like I was able to understand the business side of this career, the value that you provide to businesses, the marketing skills that can be deployed to ensure that people are connecting to the product and still are entertained. And so I really feel like I'm one of a very few group of people who got to dedicate, almost do your 1000 hours behind the scenes, so that when I stepped forward, I minimised a lot of the risks that I think influencers trip into. I just had a really robust understanding of how to make money, how to be safe, how to make sure that anyone in my orbit is safe. And so I really do feel like I have a leg above a lot of other creators because of that background.
SB: You've brought up risks there, can you tell me what kind of risks are involved with the work and when you mention being safe, what does that mean to you?
So there's one side of it which is more of the professional risk, which is there are legal ramifications to your actions. But when I say risk through the lens of my specific focus of parenthood, you're also talking about risk, the reality of people having a parasocial relationship to you, feeling very connected to you and how that manifests itself in the real world. So I have had people come up to my children when they were online and just start talking to them in public places. I have had people come up to me who like me a lot in public places and I've had people come up to me who do not like me a lot in public places. And so there's definitely a risk, especially as a queer person, you're putting yourself out there for the world to see and that can always result in physical harm, stalking, and that's just the reality. It's the downside of the job for sure.
SB: And you said when your kids were on social media, they're not any more: what made you decide to stop including them in your content?
That's right. So I have been online full-time for five years, but my children are seven. So for the first full two years of their lives I had a smaller account and I really treated it like Facebook with friends and family. I just posted pictures all the time of everything they were going through. I had rules for myself and for our family, and that was based off my professional experience. So never show their school uniforms, never show them naked, never show them in compromising situations, don't show them crying, getting angry. And the question I asked myself is, would you post this of a friend, a really good friend without asking first? And if the answer was no, then I did, then I posted it and I always was taking into consideration what would their digital footprint be. But when they turned, it was like between the ages of three and four is when people started to recognise us out in public. That was really a shift for me and coming to terms with the fact that not only was I making money off of our family, my children were also earning money for jobs they were doing that had been put away for them that they'll have access to when they're older, but are they mentally developmentally capable of understanding their involvement and the ramifications of that? And that risk and me wanting them to be involved and feeling confident that they can be involved is what drove me offline.
And then there's this other kind of thing that's not spoken about, which is it's really difficult to work with children. This is my job, it's my full-time job. I think most people listening would not want their children to come to work every single day with them. And yet my job became working with my children. That felt unfair to me as a professional. I was getting stressed out. I was having high expectations of them as colleagues, and that felt just incredibly unfair. And before they got to the point where they were really able to engage talking to camera or anything like that, I decided with my husband that not only were we going to remove them, but we were going to remove him and that I was still going to remain an active member of the parenting community online, but people weren't going to have access to where we went to dinner or what we ate, what trips we went on, and any movement of our family's life.
SB: Did that impact your following at all? What was the response when you removed your kids and your husband?
It's really interesting. Around that time I decided, I'm not naive, I've spent my whole career in this industry. I understand the value of having your children. As a marketer, we leverage social for the deep parasocial relationship that an influencer has with the follower, and it is the word of mouth that marketers are always searching for that trusted voice, that deep connection. And so if you're trying to sell parenting products or products for kids, it is actually valuable to have that word of mouth of like, wow, that kid looks like he's having fun or, wow, that mum and the kid look really great wearing it. And because I knew that removing that could potentially have an impact on my bottom line, this is my full-time job, this is how I pay for everything. I decided I needed to just build a strategy that was going to align with the modern times and hopefully it wouldn't have an impact. That first year, I grew my account 150%, and then last year it grew 250%. And so it's clearly not had an impact, but it has required a lot of strategic planning.
SB: I mean navigating social media as a parent seems so complicated, you'd almost question why bother at all? What benefits do you see coming from this space?
Social media has so many downsides and everyone listening knows them. But one of the beautiful upsides of social and the tech boom and digital competency and how it's evolved, the way that we communicate and connect with other people, is a shift in the way we talk about the brutal reality of parenthood. If you take a step back, just one singular decade, but two decades, to make the point even more clear, women were shunned for talking negatively. Primary parents were shunned for talking negatively about the parenting experience. It was a part of our cultural zeitgeist and the way that we communicated to really say, you chose this. Why are you complaining? Children are always angels. Do you need help? And one of the joys of social, and I think TikTok gets a lot of credit for this, is the shift in the way that we communicate our brutal honesty about the rude reality of the lives that we're living.
This happens in so many beautiful micro-niches, whether it be different minority groups, but in the parenthood groups specifically, we've seen a massive shift in the way we talk about the challenges of day-to-day parenthood. That's an undeniable bonus and great value that social has provided. Women in particular, but primary parents at large who get to show up after a really hard day where they're struggling and see someone else, a creator saying, I woke up 15 times last night. I'm exhausted and now I have to go to work. Or my kid just yelled at me, I'm in a fight with my partner. It's that confirmation that you're not alone. And when we think about the massive issue of mental health with first time parents, but parents in general, to have that confirmation, to be able to have, if you live in Orange, New South Wales or even farther in the middle of this country and you don't have a connection to a parenting group, you don't have a connection to share your day-to-day problems with parenthood. Social media is an amazing space. It's a huge parenting group. And so I think that's been wonderful. I think a lot more primary parents feel comfortable sharing honestly their experience. And when we share and when we can see people like us, we're more likely to ask for help, we're more likely to go and get help if we need it. And I think any therapist would admit that if we get to see ourselves, it's easier to be ourselves. And so I think in the parenting space, it's almost like a huge parenting tribe. And that's why there's just so many amazing mother creators in particular on Instagram who really are leaning into, here's the honesty, here's what you're getting yourself into, or here's what you're living through every day.
SB: You're describing the space there as a big tribe but there's also smaller groups within that. I know for example, the gentle parenting style has become increasingly popular online over recent years - what do you think of those kinds of movements that emerge?
Yeah, I think it's... listen, the reality is there are billions of people and everyone has a different cultural background, and there are socioeconomic variables that increase the likelihood of someone being successful online. And we all know that. So people who tend to trickle to the top of the parenting space just so happen usually to be white women from affluent English speaking countries. But the reality is there's unbelievable pockets all across the internet and pockets for any type of parent with any type of background. I think one of the downsides that one of the bad things about social is a trend, a way to parent in a specific situation can pop off and go viral, and an algorithm can shove that in front of people. And when you are in a constant state of decision-making, which parenthood is just like millions of micro decisions, you have to make a day and you're searching for answers, you can be influenced by a video, and that can become how you parent based off of that one video. So I usually say to people when they're like, what do you think of this parenting trend? What do you think of this? The rise of gentle parenting? I just say, I think it's just that it's a trend. Our parenting and the way that we parent shifts literally every year. I think it used to be like every decade, but social has almost made it so that it's changing daily. And I say, trust your gut. Have conversations with your tribe. Make sure that you feel confident with your partner with the way that you're parenting. Do not use a social media video to impact and influence the way you parent solely.
SB: I think that's good advice. Just quickly, I wanted to go back to how you deal with some of the more negative aspects of working in social media. You mentioned earlier that you've had people come up to you in person as well as comment negative things online - how do you deal with those encounters?
Yeah, it's a really complicated question because I have more than a decade worth of experience on the other side, responding on behalf of brands, and because of that, when I transitioned into this being my job, I don't think of myself as Sean Szeps personal person on his personal account. I think of myself as an actor who's rising to the occasion at work each day, and so when I'm responding and moderating, I'm in a business state of mind, and so if someone is there as a detractor, if the sentiment is negative, it's easy for me to think about it that way. That's just one person in a sea of positivity. If that was a data point, it would be 0.0005% negativity for the day, but I have to just, the reason it's complicated is I have to admit and acknowledge it. That is so obviously not a skill that everyone else who's an influencer has, and if you're in a bad headspace, if you're struggling mentally and you have to show up online and see homophobia every single day, I totally understand the downside of that.
I think brands need to do a better job of supporting the influencers they're working with. I think platforms need to do a better job of supporting the influencers who make their platform run, but really, if this is a job that you'd want to have and add on top of it, you're including your family, you really have to take into consideration what are your techniques and tips and tricks that are going to help you with mental health. In person, I tend to treat it the way that I've unfortunately had to treat homophobia my whole life, which is I have a lot of experience with it. Most queer people do, and usually the best situation is to walk away, ignore it, not to engage in a confrontational way while also acknowledging that there are people with different beliefs and you're top priority is your own safety.
SB: We discussed before how you no longer show your kids online but obviously they'll eventually want their own social media accounts. How do you plan to discuss social media with them when that time comes?
Yeah. I'm incredibly lucky and relieved that I grew up in a time without social media. I'm just so happy, I'm blessed that I'm not just a professional in this field, but that I'm also currently at university studying this industry because I feel better prepared to talk to them about it than most, and I'm also just so thrilled that Australia has taken the action that it's taken to limit social media use for people under the age of 16. The three of those things paired together, I'm like, I feel really good about this. The reality is the experts in this industry don't allow their children to use the technology because they understand the damage that can be done at such a young age when our brain is still developing, and so we're just going to have honest conversations about what I do, honest conversations about how I do it, constant dialogue around the upsides and downsides of technology and limited opportunities to engage with it at ways that we feel are appropriate, taking into consideration modern information that's coming out in real time.
So right now my children will not have access to social media until they legally can, which is a long time away. It's a decade away, and then with every year, especially as someone working in the industry, we can evolve and update those rules as a family, but for me, it's all about that context. So I can imagine them saying, but you make a living on these platforms, but I'm actually really, really proud of how I make a living on this platform and what information I give out, and I know that not a lot of people feel that they can do that. So for me, I think I'm practising what I'm going to be preaching for them.
SB: Yeah. It's interesting, even when I had the conversation about AI as well, it seems like the people working in social media and tech seem to be the most anti.
Exactly. I mean, the people who create the social platforms don't allow their kids to have them. The actual makers of the platforms are like, you can't have this. Absolutely not. And so as someone listening, you should literally be thinking, so the founder of TikTok, the founders of Instagram, the founders of Meta, they don't want their children to have the platforms and you are comfortable giving them to your kids? That's something you should really ask yourself.
SB: Do you expect that this is industry will continue for a long time to come?
Yeah, I do. I think it will shift dramatically. When I think back to the earliest years, my infancy as a social media expert, Pinterest didn't exist. Snapchat didn't exist, TikTok didn't exist, Instagram did not exist. I make a full-time job on Instagram, and that platform didn't even exist when I got started in the industry, so I just have no choice to think if I'm just looking in the past and trying to do some predictive rational thinking that the platforms will evolve, that our trends will evolve, that the way that we engage online will evolve, and hopefully what I'd like to see in the future is massive political involvement and restrictions with these platforms. But I am really hopeful. It goes back to the beginning of the chat that we were having about this new generation. I've looked at the data. This is a generation that is engaged in activities who are more passionate about their planet, who seem to care a lot more about one-on-one experiences, and I'm hopeful that what'll see is a generation rejecting an obsession with social and an obsession with technology, and then I'd like to see that have an impact in where we put our time and investments, especially in the tech space.
SB: You could be right - I think there is a possibility that there's almost a rebellion against social media as people grow up and see the consequences of spending too much time online.
I mean, when you look at trends online and the rise in popularity of people going and living in the middle of nowhere and living off the land. I'm like, hopefully that just keeps picking up and picking up and picking up - and that's coming from someone who would negatively benefit from that. You know what I mean? I would not benefit from people running away from social, and yet I'm really, really hopeful that it happens.
SB: That was Sean Szeps, I'm Sophie Bennett and you've been listening to the Beta Blueprint.
In the next episode, I'll be speaking with Nic Seton from Parents for Climate all about his activism and how to talk to kids about a warming planet.