Latest news with #BabsonCollege
Arab News
a day ago
- Business
- Arab News
MBSC students hone entrepreneurial skills in US
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman College concluded the seventh edition of its acclaimed Summer@Babson program, bringing together 162 master-level students from its Executive MBA, Master in Finance, and Master in Management programs for an intensive academic and entrepreneurial experience at Babson College in Massachusetts. The program is sponsored by the Babson Global Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The students arrived on Babson's campus on July 20, and were warmly welcomed by Babson College President Dr. Stephen Spinelli Jr., Babson Global President and CEO David Abdow, and a team of faculty and staff led by Kim Stanhouse, director of the Babson Global Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The program is hosted on Babson's campus, with MBSC students residing in Babson's dormitories, fostering a dynamic and immersive learning environment. The program emphasizes action planning and real-world application, guided by a diverse group of Babson faculty renowned for their expertise in entrepreneurial education. Classes commenced on July 21 and run until July 25. During this week, students engaged in a rigorous curriculum designed to deepen their understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation. Topics included leadership, marketing in the age of artificial intelligence, strategic branding, personal branding, and the art of pitching, including Babson's signature Rocket Pitch methodology. The program also emphasizes action planning and real-world application, guided by a diverse group of Babson faculty renowned for their expertise in entrepreneurial education. Summer@Babson is a cornerstone of the strategic partnership between MBSC and Babson Global, which is a founding partner of MBSC. This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to cultivating entrepreneurial leadership and advancing global business education. Located in King Abdullah Economic City — a contemporary urban center on the Red Sea coast — MBSC offers an unparalleled modern educational environment for students and faculty alike. With campuses in KAEC and Riyadh, the college delivers world-class education 'from Saudi Arabia for Saudi Arabia.' Through practical, hands-on experiential learning, MBSC is shaping a new generation of transformative leaders prepared to navigate complexity and contribute meaningfully to the Kingdom's progress. As a Saudi institution aligned with Vision 2030, MBSC continues to cultivate change-makers who are not only job seekers, but job creators — equipped with the entrepreneurial mindset and leadership capacity to drive economic diversification and national advancement.
NBC News
2 days ago
- Business
- NBC News
How Tim Cook convinced Trump to drop made-in-USA iPhone — for now
President Donald Trump has made clear that he wants Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. Apple CEO Tim Cook is doing what he can to appease the commander in chief, without making that ultimate concession. Cook on Wednesday appeared at the White House with Trump to announce plans to spend about $600 billion over four years in the U.S. Apple didn't announce the made-in-USA iPhone that Trump wants, but Cook got to tout Apple's position on U.S. production. Some of Apple's most valuable parts, such as its glass and facial recognition sensor, are made by U.S. companies that Apple has worked with for years. Final assembly is only a small, though very critical, part of iPhone production. 'The final assembly that you focus on, that will be elsewhere for a while,' Cook said Wednesday in the Oval Office. Trump appeared happy enough, for now. 'He makes many of the components here, and we've been talking about it,' Trump said. 'The whole thing is set up in other places, and it's been there for a long time in terms of cost and all, but I think we may incentivize him enough that one day he'll be bringing that back.' Experts said Cook's announcement seemed designed to get Apple out of Trump's crosshairs with respect to tariffs. Trump announced during the public meeting that the administration planned to place a tariff on chips that would double their price, but Apple — which relies on hundreds of different chips for its devices — would be exempt. 'CEOs are realizing that they do have to do something, and what they've discovered is that if they give the president something to brag about without destroying their company, that the problem might go away for a certain amount of time,' said Peter Cohan, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Babson College who has written case studies on Apple. The gambit worked. Apple stock rose 5% on Wednesday and another 3% on Thursday. 'What Tim Cook demonstrated in the first administration was a real savvy navigation of the treacherous waters,' said Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments, which holds a position in Apple. 'I thought this announcement was super-important symbolically, because the president is looking for headlines.' What Apple announced The centerpiece of Apple's announcement was the so-called American Manufacturing Program, which Apple said was designed to incentivize other companies to make parts for computers in the U.S. By Apple committing to purchase parts and expand its relationship with U.S. suppliers, it could give those companies the skills and capacity to expand their business. And it lets Apple take some credit for supporting the 450,000 total jobs at its suppliers. A closer look at the members of the program shows that Apple is leaning on some of its longest-tenured partners. All together, Apple said that its U.S. suppliers are on track to make 19 billion chips for its products this year. That level of business doesn't appear overnight. For example, Apple said that all of its cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches would be made by Corning, in Kentucky, and that it would spend $2.5 billion on that effort. It's a powerful symbol — while the phone might be screwed together in China or India, the surface that users touch around the world will be made in the U.S. But Apple has pointed to Corning as a critical American supplier in the past. The company's glass has been used on the iPhone since its first version in 2007. While Apple typically doesn't let its suppliers talk about their relationships, former COO Jeff Williams hailed Corning's glass in 2017, when it got an 'investment' from the Apple Advanced Manufacturing Fund. Apple followed that up with a $250 million commitment in 2019, and $45 million in 2021. Analysts are skeptical that the partnership could substantially improve Corning's revenue. Morgan Stanley analysts wrote on Thursday that Corning 'already produces 100% of the cover glass for Apple's phones and tablets,' adding that Corning's glass business called Specialty Materials is worth about $2 billion per year. Apple also highlighted its partnership with Coherent, a longtime supplier of lasers for Apple's facial recognition hardware, which is made in Texas. Morgan Stanley pegged the business at about $100 million per year, and said Apple has options including Lumentum and Sony. The iPhone maker said it expanded a partnership with Texas Instruments to make chips in Texas and Utah. Texas Instruments has long supplied chips for the iPhone, such as circuits to control USB interfaces or power displays. Apple said it would partner with Samsung, another key supplier of parts like iPhone displays, to launch an 'innovative new technology for making chips,' without offering additional details. Apple declared that it will partner directly with companies in the semiconductor chain, even if they typically sell services or goods to Apple suppliers. Other partnerships are with Applied Materials, a tooling company, GlobalFoundries, a chip foundry, and GlobalWafers America, which is supplying Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Texas Instruments with made-in-USA wafers, the starting point for a batch of chips. GlobalFoundries manufactures chips for Broadcom, which supplies wireless chips for iPhones. Both will work with Apple to develop and manufacture 5G components in the U.S. Meanwhile, Apple will buy millions of advanced chips made by TSMC in Arizona, where it will be the factory's largest customer. Cook joined former President Joe Biden at the plant in 2022 and committed to buying chips from the factory. Apple said it would invest in and become a customer at an Arizona Amkor facility, which packages and tests chips, the final stage before installation in a computer. Apple also said it would expand existing data centers for artificial intelligence in North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Oregon. It's highlighted these data centers in the past in spending commitments. While Apple's announcement sent partner stocks up, JPMorgan Chase analysts warned in a note on Thursday that 'the new and expanded engagements might not be completely incremental to global revenues and outlook.' Trump had a different take. 'Oh, I love that you're doing this,' the president said, after reading a list of Apple's commitments. 'Cost of doing business' Apple has little to worry about when it comes to who will hold the company accountable for its promises. The company doesn't break out U.S. spending, and most of Apple's suppliers are contractually required to keep the information secret. Apple doesn't report how much its new campuses in Austin, Texas, or North Carolina end up costing. Additionally, the $600 billion headline number likely includes lots of regular expenses. Apple said in February that its $500 billion commitment included payments to U.S. suppliers, direct employment, data centers for Apple Intelligence and corporate facilities, as well as spending on Apple TV+ productions in 20 states. Apple started publicly announcing U.S. spending during Trump's first administration in 2018, at a rate of about $70 billion per year. In February, the company committed to $125 billion per year. Wednesday's announcement brings that figure to $150 billion annually. That's still a fraction of Apple's total spending. In Apple's fiscal 2024, the company spent $210 billion globally on cost of goods sold, $57.5 billion on operating expenses and $9.45 billion in capital expenditures for nearly $275 billion in global spending during the period. Teffler said she didn't think the newly announced spending would be material to Apple's profitability, especially since it already has relationships with the various companies such as Corning. 'They're going to spend money somewhere,' Tegler said. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who previously predicted a made-in-USA iPhone would cost billions to produce and would leave consumers paying $3,500, said the Wednesday announcements indicate a much different approach. He said it's 'the cost of doing business.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Their childhoods are on display for millions. States, including Virginia, want to protect them.
Ryan Kaji, center, attends the Ryan's World Meet & Greet during the 10th Annual Bentonville Film Festival on June 14, 2024, in Bentonville, Ark. Ryan's World is largely credited as being the first kidfluencer channel on YouTube. Some state legislators are pushing to protect child influencers. (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.' 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 adult 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. 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.' 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.' 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. 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. 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.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Solve the daily Crossword
CNBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
How Tim Cook convinced Trump to drop made-in-USA iPhone — for now
President Donald Trump has made clear that he wants Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. Apple CEO Tim Cook is doing what he can to appease the commander in chief, without making that ultimate concession. Cook on Wednesday appeared at the White House with President Trump to announce plans to spend about $600 billion over four years in the U.S. Apple didn't announce the made-in-USA iPhone that Trump wants, but Cook got to tout Apple's position on U.S. production. Some of Apple's most valuable parts, such as its glass and facial recognition sensor, are made by U.S. companies that Apple has worked with for years. Final assembly is only a small, though very critical, part of iPhone production. "The final assembly that you focus on, that will be elsewhere for a while," Cook said Wednesday in the Oval Office. Trump appeared happy enough, for now. "He makes many of the components here, and we've been talking about it," Trump said. "The whole thing is set up in other places, and it's been there for a long time in terms of cost and all, but I think we may incentivize him enough that one day he'll be bringing that back." Experts said Cook's announcement seemed designed to get Apple out of Trump's crosshairs with respect to tariffs. Trump announced during the public meeting that the administration planned to place a tariff on chips that would double their price, but Apple — which relies on hundreds of different chips for its devices — would be exempt. "CEOs are realizing that they do have to do something, and what they've discovered is that if they give the president something to brag about without destroying their company, that the problem might go away for a certain amount of time," said Peter Cohan, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Babson College who has written case studies on Apple. The gambit worked. Apple stock rose 5% on Wednesday and another 3% on Thursday. "What Tim Cook demonstrated in the first administration was a real savvy navigation of the treacherous waters," said Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments, which holds a position in Apple. "I thought this announcement was super-important symbolically, because the president is looking for headlines." The centerpiece of Apple's announcement was the so-called American Manufacturing Program, which Apple said was designed to incentivize other companies to make parts for computers in the U.S. By Apple committing to purchase parts and expand its relationship with U.S. suppliers, it could give those companies the skills and capacity to expand their business. And it lets Apple take some credit for supporting the 450,000 total jobs at its suppliers. A closer look at the members of the program shows that Apple is leaning on some of its longest-tenured partners. All together, Apple said that its U.S. suppliers are on track to make 19 billion chips for its products this year. That level of business doesn't appear overnight. For example, Apple said that all of its cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches would be made by Corning, in Kentucky, and that it would spend $2.5 billion on that effort. It's a powerful symbol — while the phone might be screwed together in China or India, the surface that users touch around the world will be made in the U.S. But Apple has pointed to Corning as a critical American supplier in the past. The company's glass has been used on the iPhone since its first version in 2007. While Apple typically doesn't let its suppliers talk about their relationships, former COO Jeff Williams hailed Corning's glass in 2017, when it got an "investment" from the Apple Advanced Manufacturing Fund. Apple followed that up with a $250 million commitment in 2019, and $45 million in 2021. Analysts are skeptical that the partnership could substantially improve Corning's revenue. Morgan Stanley analysts wrote on Thursday that Corning "already produces 100% of the cover glass for Apple's phones and tablets," adding that Corning's glass business called Specialty Materials is worth about $2 billion per year. Apple also highlighted its partnership with Coherent, a longtime supplier of lasers for Apple's facial recognition hardware, which is made in Texas. Morgan Stanley pegged the business at about $100 million per year, and said Apple has options including Lumentum and Sony. The iPhone maker said it expanded a partnership with Texas Instruments to make chips in Texas and Utah. Texas Instruments has long supplied chips for the iPhone, such as circuits to control USB interfaces or power displays. Apple said it would partner with Samsung, another key supplier of parts like iPhone displays, to launch an "innovative new technology for making chips," without offering additional details. Apple declared that it will partner directly with companies in the semiconductor chain, even if they typically sell services or goods to Apple suppliers. Other partnerships are with Applied Materials, a tooling company, GlobalFoundries, a chip foundry, and GlobalWafers America, which is suppling Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Texas Instruments with made-in-USA wafers, the starting point for a batch of chips. GlobalFoundries manufactures chips for Broadcom, which supplies wireless chips for iPhones. Both will work with Apple to develop and manufacture 5G components in the U.S. Meanwhile, Apple will buy millions of advanced chips made by TSMC in Arizona, where it will be the factory's largest customer. Cook joined former President Biden at the plant in 2022 and committed to buying chips from the factory. Apple said it would invest in and become a customer at an Arizona Amkor facility, which packages and tests chips, the final stage before installation in a computer. Apple also said it would expand existing data centers for artificial intelligence in North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Oregon. It's highlighted these data centers in the past in spending commitments. While Apple's announcement sent partner stocks up, JPMorgan Chase analysts warned in a note on Thursday that "the new and expanded engagements might not be completely incremental to global revenues and outlook." Trump had a different take. "Oh, I love that you're doing this," the president said, after reading a list of Apple's commitments. Apple has little to worry about when it comes to who will hold the company accountable for its promises. The company doesn't break out U.S. spending, and most of Apple's suppliers are contractually required to keep the information secret. Apple doesn't report how much its new campuses in Austin or North Carolina end up costing. Additionally, the $600 billion headline number likely includes lots of regular expenses. Apple said in February that its $500 billion commitment included payments to U.S. suppliers, direct employment, data centers for Apple Intelligence and corporate facilities, as well as spending on Apple TV+ productions in 20 states. Apple started publicly announcing U.S. spending during Trump's first administration in 2018, at a rate of about $70 billion per year. In February, the company committed to $125 billion per year. Wednesday's announcement brings that figure to $150 billion annually. That's still a fraction of Apple's total spending. In Apple's fiscal 2024, Apple spent $210 billion globally on cost of goods sold, $57.5 billion on operating expenses, and $9.45 billion in capital expenditures for nearly $275 billion in global spending during the period. Teffler said she didn't think the newly announced spending would be material to Apple's profitability, especially since it already has relationships with the various companies such as Corning. "They're going to spend money somewhere," Tegler said. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who previously predicted a made-in-USA iPhone would cost billions to produce and would leave consumers paying $3,500, said the Wednesday announcements indicate a much different approach. He said it's "the cost of doing business."
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Their childhoods are on display for millions. States want to protect them.
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 mfitzgerald@ 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: info@ Solve the daily Crossword
