Utah's new child influencer law cracks the veneer of social media fame
The documentary, titled 'Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke,' features several moments like this, moments that illustrate what detractors see as a wider phenomenon in which the family blogging industry is exposed for its many pitfalls and deceptions, particularly as it pertains to the protection and treatment of children.
Indeed, Utah, where the Franke family resided and recorded daily family life for years, has become the fourth state to legislate protections for influencer kids with the passing of HB 322 into law in March, following high-profile activism from Franke family members, who were YouTube family vlogging royalty before matriarch Ruby was arrested on charges of child abuse.
Ruby Franke and her estranged husband, Kevin Franke, were the head of the YouTube family channel '8 Passengers.' At its height, the channel commanded more than 2 million subscribers. In her content, Ruby Franke often touted strict parenting, like the time she infamously refused to bring her 6-year-old daughter lunch after the child had forgotten it or when her teenage son was made to sleep on a beanbag for months as a punishment. In 2023, Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested on charges of child abuse after Franke's 12-year-old son escaped from Hildebrandt's house. The child appeared emaciated and had wounds on his wrists and ankles. Franke's 9-year-old daughter was found in a closet of Hildebrandt's house, in a similar state. Hildebrandt and Franke each pleaded guilty to four counts of felony child abuse, for which they were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.
The fallout of Ruby Franke's arrest was intense. For detractors of family vloggers and mom influencers, Franke's arrest was proof positive that their suspicions were correct and something ominous was lurking under the perfect veneer of social media fame. Anti-vlogging advocates had the feeling that the bottom was finally falling out of a deeply rotten industry. Buffeted by the moment, Shari Franke, the eldest child of Ruby Franke, spoke in front of the Utah Legislature, saying, 'There is no ethical or moral family vlogger.'
In the wake of the Franke family tragedy, calls for protections for kids of influencers have intensified. Though people often assume that child influencers are covered under legal protections for child actors, they're not. In 46 of 50 states, it's legal for parents to feature their kids in monetized or sponsored content without paying the children for their labor.
It's particularly impactful for Utah, of all states, to have passed legislation for the privacy and profits of influencer kids, as experts often point to Utah as a hot spot for mom influencers, family vloggers and kid influencers. There's an entire book to be written about why Mormon people are so drawn to influencing — and why they're often so successful at it, including the fact that recordkeeping and scrapbooking are mainstay traditions of the Mormon faith, skills that lend themselves to content creation — but the bottom line is that Utah is one of the most popular states for family vloggers and mom influencers. And though people who were raised as kid influencers aren't a monolith, it's important to listen to them when they speak about their experiences, like when Shari Franke told Rolling Stone, 'Making money off your kids [with] no oversight as to how much the kids are getting paid — there's no way to do that well for me.'
I'm a journalist who covers family vloggers and mom influencers, and my take on their work is far from black-and-white. I don't believe that showing your kid online is immoral in itself. We shouldn't conflate the horrors of Ruby Franke's story with the lives of every kid featured in their influencer parents' content. And not every mom influencer and family vlogger are evil — far from it. But if there's an industry that turns on the labor of kids, it makes sense to compensate them for their labor, at the very least.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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