Netflix Doc Reveals Risks To Kid Stars, As States Gut Child Labor Laws

Forbes

15-04-2025

Netflix pulls back the curtain on social media child stardom in its latest buzzworthy documentary, Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing, which premiered on April 9, 2025. The three-part investigative series follows Piper Rockelle's rise to fame as a YouTube child influencer starting at age nine. The series not only shines light on the hidden reality of child content creation. It also illuminates the inadequacy of child labor laws in the U.S.
Rockelle's social media career was engineered by her mother, Tiffany Smith, who built a group of aspiring child stars into an online phenomenon known as the 'Squad.' At its height, Rockelle's YouTube channel was getting billions of views of the Squad's skits, dances, pranks, challenges, and 'crushes,' as its members grew from tweens to teens.
Kidfluencing is a lucrative business. Rockelle's channel was raking in upwards of $620,000 a month from revenue streams and brand partnerships, for an estimated $4.2 to $7.5 million a year.
Over time, the parents of some of the Squad's participants began to suspect a toxic behind-the-scenes experience. Multiple children from the Squad came forward with serious allegations of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. The children also alleged exploitative work conditions, often logging extremely long hours without meals or rest breaks, without on-set schooling, and without sharing fairly in the profits, according to a 2022 Los Angeles Times investigation.
Bad Influence, directed by Jenna Rosher and Kief Davidson, follows the children's experience from the Squad's creation to the resulting lawsuit filed against Smith in 2022. The suit was brought by 11 former Squad members and their parents, seeking at least $22 million in damages. Smith paid $1.85 million to settle the lawsuit in 2024, without admitting wrongdoing, which she has publicly denied.
The working conditions portrayed in the docuseries have renewed calls for increased child labor protections. But instead of updating child labor laws, many states are moving in the opposite direction. In the last five years, a record number of states have fielded bills to roll back existing child labor laws, in response to both industry and political pressure.
These opposing trends—increasing child labor violations alongside decreasing child labor protections—are analyzed in a 2023 report by the Economic Policy Institute, authored by Jennifer Sherer, Deputy Director of EPI's Economic Analysis and Research Network, and Nina Mast, EPI Policy and Economic Analyst. Sherer and Mast explore what this conflict means for the future of child labor in the U.S.
Employers must comply with both federal and state child labor laws. Federal law sets the floor, and states can impose higher (but not lower) child labor protections.
Child labor law violations are on the rise in the U.S. The number of minors employed in violation of federal child labor laws identified by the U.S. Department of Labor in fiscal year 2024 increased by 43% over fiscal year 2021, and by nearly 300% over fiscal year 2015. The DOL imposed over $15 million in civil penalties against employers for child labor violations in fiscal year 2024 alone.
This data likely captures only the tip of the child labor iceberg. 'These numbers represent just a tiny fraction of violations, most of which go unreported and uninvestigated,' according to Sherer and Mast.
The challenge of uncovering child exploitation is compounded for child influencers, whose work is often controlled by parents and takes place largely behind private doors. It's unclear whether the work of kidfluencers even counts as 'labor' under existing laws.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is the federal law governing child labor for employers nationwide that meet certain size thresholds. The FLSA sets minimum ages and maximum hours for child workers, with greater restrictions for minors working in hazardous industries. However, the FLSA excludes child actors from its coverage, leaving their protection up to the states. Historically, most states enacted their own child labor laws imposing a higher level of protection.
Some state laws specifically protect child actors. This includes several states with so-called 'Coogan laws,' which require a certain percentage of a child actor's earnings to be placed in a trust until adulthood. California and Illinois have extended their Coogan laws to apply to children making money on social media. Otherwise, state laws protecting child actors typically have not been applied to kidfluencers.
This gap in existing child labor laws—along with the rise in child labor violations in conventional workplaces—has renewed long-time calls for strengthening legal protections for child workers.
Despite growing concerns about the welfare of child workers, many states have been pushing for less, rather than more, child labor protections.
Since 2021, over 60 bills to weaken existing child labor laws have been introduced across 29 states, according to a 2024 report by the State Innovation Exchange and the Economic Analysis and Research Network of the EPI. At least 17 of those bills have been successfully enacted across 13 states. This includes eight states that adopted child labor rollbacks during just the first half of 2024, according to EPI data.
These state bills are targeting the full range of child labor protections.
Some states bills would eliminate youth work permits and parent or guardian permission requirements, remove or lower age restrictions, expand permissible work hours, or extend work hours allowed before breaks. Some state bills would permit a lower minimum wage for children. And some state bills would reduce restrictions on minors working in hazardous industries, or in jobs that require driving or serving alcohol.
The recent push to deregulate child labor is being fueled by both industry and political forces.
Across the country, the primary proponents of laws to roll back child labor protections are business groups and their state affiliates, including the National Federation of Independent Business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Restaurant Association. Lobbyists from the hotel, lodging, hospitality, tourism, grocery, construction, home builders, and agricultural industries are among the supporters.
Conservative organizations have also been involved in efforts to weaken child labor restrictions, including Americans for Prosperity, The Acton Institute, and the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability.
Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis supports loosening child labor laws as a way to replace immigrant workers with American youth. Last month, Florida's legislature advanced a bill to weaken child labor restrictions, including allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts.
Many of the proposed state bills are actually seeking to reduce child labor protections below the federal floor set by the FLSA. These laws sow confusion among employers, who may not realize that they are still required to follow federal law.
The U.S. Department of Labor recently alerted employers that they remain legally obligated to comply with federal child labor protections rather than any newly enacted, weaker state laws. 'Where a state child labor law is less restrictive than the federal law, the federal law applies,' the DOL instructs on its webpage on child labor standards.
Why would states enact laws that contradict federal law, knowing that employers must still comply with the higher federal mandates?
'The ultimate intent of the corporate lobby is clear: to pave a path to national deregulation of child labor, one state at a time,' said Sherer and Mast in their 2023 EPI Report. 'Industry lobbyists backing state child labor law changes appear to view state-by-state erosion of protections as a way to build pressure for eventual relaxation or elimination of federal wage and hour standards for the whole country.'
As the effort to roll back child labor laws has gained momentum, some states have bucked the trend by passing laws in 2024 to enhance child labor protection or enforcement efforts. These states include Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia.
Organizational leaders should educate themselves on these legal developments, as companies may increasingly be pushed to take a stand on the battle over the future of U.S. child labor laws. Calls for companies to incorporate child labor protection into their corporate social responsibility plans will likely expand from an international to a domestic focus as child labor risks increase.