The camera rolls as a little girl spins in her new dress, her mother’s voice singing in the background, “Say cheese!” A perfect shot for their millions of subscribers. But once the recording stops, the smile vanishes from the little girl’s face. “Again,” her mother snaps back, barely glancing up from the analytic dashboard tracking their revenue. 

Behind the perfectly curated vlogs of morning routines and family vacations lies an industry built on clicks, exploitation and a desperate hunger for profit — one where childhood innocence is just another monetized asset.

A well known example of this is the YouTube channel, “8 Passengers.” The popular family vlogging channel ran on YouTube for several years, reaching 2.5 million followers at its peak. 

The vlogs published on this channel followed the lives of Ruby Franke, her now ex-husband and their six children. 

The channel’s goal was to portray a perfect and wholesome suburban family. 

BBC News wrote that Franke “edited a window into her life, showing a typical Mormon suburban family, home-schooling, cooking, eating and chatting away together.” 

Franke’s disciplinary techniques shown in her videos were controversial, such as taking away her son’s bed for months and restricting food as punishment. 

On Aug. 30, 2023, Franke was arrested and charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse, four of which she has pleaded guilty to. Franke was caught when her 12-year-old son Russell Franke escaped their house in Utah. He went to the nearby neighborhood and began asking for food from neighbors. One of the neighbors opened the door and called the police due to the boy’s severely malnourished appearance and the visible wounds on his wrists and ankles. 

Following Franke’s arrest, many viewers went back to the “8 Passengers” YouTube channel to look for signs of the alleged abuse.

Viewers felt that Franke’s vlogging was an invasion of her children’s privacy. She posted videos documenting her daughter’s first time shaving or buying her first bra. 

Despite her children’s visible discomfort in being documented in front of a camera, Franke continued the channel as their her main source of income. 

According to Forbes, the channel brought in over $100,000 per month.

In February of this year, Hulu released a documentary series called “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke,” which included testimonies from her two oldest children as well as her ex-husband about the abuse that went on behind the scenes. Franke’s oldest daughter Shari, stated in the documentary that “our entire schedule revolved around YouTube, and that’s where I started to have issues.”

For many viewers, these family channels seem to cross a line.

Similarly, child influencer Piper Rockelle’s mother Tiffany Smith has faced exploitation allegations.

In January 2022, Smith was sued by 11 teenage content creators who were frequently featured on her daughter’s YouTube channel. 

According to NBC News, Smith was accused of abuse and exploitation. The creators said in their complaints, “[the teenagers] endured physical and emotional injuries from ‘harassment, molestation, and abuse.’” The case continued for over a year, and eventually the parties reached a $1.85 million settlement. 

For years, Rockelle’s social media accounts, managed by her mom, were criticized for the content that was published. 

Labeled as not age appropriate, many people felt the clothes that she would wear was an attempt to oversexualize her and bring more attention to the account. 

An analysis by The New York Times found that many accounts featuring young girls had high percentages of male followers. In particular, many accounts with over 100,000 followers had a male audience of over 75%. The Times also discovered that many male followers were adult men who “openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children.”  

Because many mom influencers are aware of the large number of male viewers on their accounts, they take extra measures to protect their children’s privacy. Maia Knight was a popular influencer on TikTok with over 7 million followers. For a time, her account revolved around her toddler twin daughters, but after receiving negative attention from male followers that compromised her daughters’ safety and privacy, Knight rebranded her social media platforms and took her daughters out of the public eye.

Parents should not be able to monetize their children on any social media platform. Many people are too easily influenced by greed to not turn to questionable invasions of their children’s privacies. Social media companies need to place more regulations on content involving minors in order to protect them.