Their childhoods are on display for millions. States want to protect them.

Yahoo

6 days ago

Ryan Kaji (C) attends the Ryan's World Meet & Greet during the 10th Annual Bentonville Film Festival on June 14, 2024 in Bentonville, Arkansas. (Photo byfor Bentonville Film Festival)
A couple of years ago, Alisa Jno-Charles saw her now 9-year-old daughter watching a YouTube video of several children and their swift ninja moves.
The video was from Ninja Kidz TV, a YouTube channel that features four young siblings who were raised in a martial arts studio, according to their official website. The channel has about 23.9 million subscribers.
Jno-Charles scrolled through the Ninja Kidz TV videos and noticed that the content featured more than just the kids' ninja antics: Every single part of their lives was documented, she said.
'It was their first date, and their insecurities about social situations, and major life decisions — like the type of school they should go to — and their birthday parties,' Jno-Charles said. 'It was everything. And that didn't sit well with me.'
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Jno-Charles did some more digging into 'kidfluencing' on YouTube. She knew, of course, about social media influencers, and that it had become accepted as a legitimate job — for adults. But were there protections, she wondered, 'for children who can't actually make that decision to go into that business themselves?'
An increasing number of state lawmakers are asking the same question.
In the absence of federal regulations, some legislators are pushing to protect child influencers. Many of the measures aim to ensure kids are compensated fairly for their work, by requiring those with account managers — usually their parents — to set aside any earnings in a trust fund the children can access once they are adults. Some of the bills also aim to give children more control over the content they are featured in.
Bill would add protections for children used as content by social media influencers
The experience with her daughter prompted Jno-Charles, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to research the fast-growing industry.
In a paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Business Ethics, Jno-Charles and Canadian researcher Daniel Clark concluded that kidfluencing was 'a new form of child labor' that can financially exploit kids and violate their privacy, among other harms.
'Kidfluencing represents a uniquely insidious threat because [it's] seemingly so benign,' Jno-Charles and Clark wrote. 'It is prone to willful blindness from the parents, the platforms, the audience, and society at large.'
The risks are especially great, they argue, when kidfluencers are the family's primary source of income, 'obscuring the distinction between the best interests of the child and those of the family.'
But Jno-Charles said many of the state bills focus on financial compensation while ignoring other issues, such as the child's reputation and whether it will harm their future employment opportunities, relationships and more.
'We've seen so many stories come out on families that have exploited and abused their children in a lot of very terrible ways, the least of which is monetarily,' she said. 'How do you protect children from those situations? I feel like these regulations are a good start, but it's not really addressing what I perceive to be the true issues around influence.'
Kidfluencers and other content creators make money by hawking products and services to the people who follow them. The job has become increasingly lucrative as companies spend more on social media marketing. Some influencers can earn $10,000 or more for a single post, said Alex Ambrose, a policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit focused on science and technology.
Ryan's World is largely credited as being the first kidfluencer channel on YouTube. The channel got its start in 2015 with videos featuring 3-year-old Ryan Kaji, who enjoyed unboxing new toys.
Today, Ryan is entering his teen years, and Ryan's World has nearly 40 million subscribers. The Ryan's World brand is managed by Sunlight Entertainment, a family-owned production company headed by Ryan's father. And this year, Ryan Kaji was No. 21 on the Forbes Top Creators list, with $35 million in earnings as of late June.
'It's so easy for children to just start creating,' Ambrose said. 'And with TikTok and Instagram, the ability to edit videos and edit content now is so much easier than it was in the past. You can just start creating with very simple tools that are available to folks.'
Social media experts are skeptical about the power of new state laws
Kidfluencers are growing in popularity across nearly every social media platform. While some youths have started accounts on their own, others are managed and monitored by their parents.
Other forms of media already have labor standards. Children who appear on television or in films have contracts that stipulate what they will be paid. Some states, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, New Mexico and New York, have laws mandating that employers of child actors set aside a portion of their earnings — generally 15% — in a trust the actors can access when they become adults.
The first such law was enacted by California in 1939. The Coogan Law was inspired by child actor Jackie Coogan, who played the title role in Charlie Chaplin's 'The Kid' and was one of Hollywood's first child stars. When Coogan became an adult, he discovered that his parents had squandered much of the money he had earned.
In 2023, Illinois expanded its version of the Coogan Law to include kidfluencers, and California followed suit in 2024 (the laws took effect in 2024 and 2025, respectively).
This year, at least four states — Arkansas, Montana, Utah and Virginia — have amended their child labor laws to mandate trusts and other protections for content creators who are minors. And when Hawaii this year approved its own version of the Coogan Law, it included child influencers in the definition of minors engaged in 'theatrical employment.'
The New Jersey General Assembly and the New York Senate also approved child influencer legislation this year, but neither has become law.
Arkansas Republican state Rep. Zack Gramlich, who sponsored the legislation in his state, is a schoolteacher and the father of a 2-year-old and a 9-month-old. Both in the legislature and at home, Gramlich said, he's worked toward ensuring kids are protected when they use the internet.
The Arkansas legislation he authored has a trust requirement, but it also includes other protections for child influencers, such as requiring adults to pay minors if they are using them to create content for money. For example, a minor must be paid if they or their likeness appears in at least 30% of the content produced over 30 days, or if the adult earned at least $15,000 in the previous 12 months.
The legislation also prohibits accounts from sharing 'any visual depiction of a minor with the intent to sexually gratify or elicit a sexual response in the viewer or any other person.'
In some ways, this is an extension of child labor protections.
– Arkansas Republican state Rep. Zack Gramlich
This goes beyond existing prohibitions on child pornography to include, for example, parents who dress their child-influencer daughters in bikinis or dance leotards for their followers — some of whom are paying a monthly fee to see that kind of content, according to an investigation by The New York Times.
Gramlich said Google helped him write the legislation. Ambrose, of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said other social media companies have played a similar role in other states, and are establishing new policies for content featuring children.
Instagram last month announced new protections for adult-managed accounts that primarily feature children. This includes placing these accounts into a stricter category to prevent unwanted messages and turning on filters for offensive comments, according to the announcement.
Google and Meta did not grant Stateline requests for interviews.
A handful of legislators pushed back against the bill, Gramlich said, because they were concerned about putting too much responsibility on the parents. But when a parent is making an additional $15,000 a year by posting videos of their children, he said, there must be rules.
'In some ways, this is an extension of child labor protections,' Gramlich said. 'We're at the point where kids aren't in the mines anymore, but it looks like they're going to be on the internet. But now, their parents may be making money off their efforts, and they never get to see it.'
Social media audiences do not see the production behind online content, Gramlich said. These audiences are only seeing the finished product. And younger kids may not realize that their work is being used for money and will forever exist online, he said.
'If you're anything like me, you've been told for the last 15 years that everything you put on the internet is there forever,' Gramlich said. 'But can a child really understand what that means?'
The Utah legislation also goes beyond trusts. Utah Democratic state Rep. Doug Owens, the House sponsor of the bill, wanted to make sure that child influencers had the right to delete their content once they became adults. His legislation, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox in March, requires that social media companies create a process for people who want their content removed or edited.
For family bloggers, kids make money. A Utah lawmaker wants to make sure they're compensated, too
Before the legislation was drafted, two people reached out to Owens asking him to propose protections for child actors and influencers. One was a constituent — a child actor who had appeared in traditional television commercials.
The second, he said, was Kevin Franke, the ex-husband of former YouTube family vlogger Ruby Franke. In 2023, the popular YouTube star was arrested after her 12-year-old son, with duct tape stuck to his ankles and wrists, ran to a neighbor's house and asked for food and water. She was later convicted on child abuse charges and sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.
Recent docuseries on Netflix and Hulu have revealed the ways in which kidfluencing can lead to children experiencing peer pressure, manipulation, child abuse and, in the case of the Franke family, torture.
Both the child actor and Kevin Franke said children in the entertainment industry — including kidfluencers — should have adults who are looking out for them, Owens said.
'I think social media is just an obvious place where kids need some protection,' he said.
But most state legislatures remain focused on broader social media concerns, such as age restrictions, said Georgia Democratic state Rep. Kim Schofield, who has sponsored a child influencer bill in her state.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
In February, Schofield introduced a measure that would mandate trusts for child influencers. Her bill also would restrict children's work schedules: A child between the ages of 9 and 16, for instance, would be barred from working more than five hours a day.
'I'm so excited to see that these kids are just so talented,' Schofield said. 'They have a means to broaden and expand an endless universe online — I love that I get to see that. But if you're making so much money and making the family rich, I want to make sure that you're getting a piece of the pie.'
Stateline reporter Madyson Fitzgerald can be reached at [e-mail].
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [e-mail].
Solve the daily Crossword