Children are a sign of a healthy society. Ancient peoples had gods of fertility. Even today, large families are often seen as a blessing. But a society in which parents post images of their children online for profit is sick.

Thousands of families make a living with videos ranging from day-in-the-life vlogs to play-by-plays of extravagant vacations. They seek millions of followers. And they keep creating more content to earn a stable income. 

Many accounts revolve around small children. Audiences fawn over their cuteness and enjoy watching them grow up. But when these children do finally grow up, they find the public life their parents chose for them as infants is the only path left. Many resent their parents’ choice to publicize their childhoods, finding it difficult to live a “normal” life afterwards.

Cam Barrett, a 25-year-old former child social media star, now advocates for the legal protection of influencer children. Barrett said her experiences have led her to receive disturbing messages and attention from strangers online from the digital footprint she “never asked for.”

The rising generation of young parents should take a cue and change. Rather than exposing every aspect of their childrens’ lives to the world, parents should instead grant their children the dignity of privacy. 

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a  law March 25 that would require influencer parents to give their kids a portion of the money made from content featuring the children and make it easier for adult children to remove content they appeared in as minors.

Cox signed the law in part due to the scandal surrounding former YouTuber Ruby Franke. 

Franke and her husband Kevin started the channel “8 Passengers” in 2015 to document their seemingly picture-perfect life with their six children. The channel blew up, amassing 2.5 million subscribers and over 1 billion views.

But viewers began to sense that something was wrong with the Frankes. The children, at first eager to be featured in videos, slowly began to ruin the image of a “perfect” life. As time went on, they became visibly weary of living for a camera. To produce the kind of videos her audience wanted to see, Franke decided her children must be obedient — or else. 

In one video released in 2020, Ruby jokingly revealed to the viewers that her oldest son had lost the privilege of having a bedroom and had slept on a beanbag in the basement for the last seven months. 

The move brought strong criticism. The channel saw a massive decrease in subscriptions and viewership, tanking the family’s paychecks — which at one point topped $100,000 per month. Soon after, the family ceased posting content on “8 Passengers,” and eventually deleted the page. 

After Ruby’s media quest for influence failed, counselor and business owner Jodi Hildebrandt provided another avenue for prestige. The two began a parenting podcast in 2022, the same year Ruby Franke separated from her husband Kevin, retaining custody of the four youngest children.

A year later, law enforcement discovered the Frankes’ youngest son emaciated, with duct tape wrapped around rope lacerations on his ankles (among other injuries), near Hildebrandt’s home. The youngest daughter was later found in an empty room in Hildebrandt’s mansion with her head shaved and similar wounds.

Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested and convicted of six counts of aggravated child abuse. This year, both were sentenced to serve up to thirty years in jail. Following Ruby’s arrest, Kevin filed for divorce, finalized last month.

As the family now grieves its broken relationships and the children’s flawed upbringing, Kevin Franke laments the decisions he and his wife made for their YouTube channel. He said he wants to prevent other families from making the same mistake.

“Children cannot give informed consent to be filmed on social media, period,” Kevin told lawmakers. “Vlogging my family, putting my children into public social media, was wrong, and I regret it every day.”

The Franke family’s story is not the story of every influencer family. Yet they exemplify why families should keep their daily lives, and especially their children, off the internet.

It’s one thing for a parent to post an image or video on Facebook for close friends and relatives to see. It’s another to center a family’s entire life on a social media presence. Instead, families should capture memories their kids will cherish recalling for years to come. 

But it’s not just the influencers — the market needs to stop, too. Rather than spending hours scrolling through an influencer’s Instagram, viewers should spend time with friends and neighbors. Put the screen down and prioritize face-to-face interactions. 

Children need to see their parents’ faces. But when a parent is consumed with filming every second of their child’s life, they trade a deep relationship for a life of acting perfect for the cameras. 

If children truly are a “heritage from the Lord,” as Proverbs 22:6 says, influencers ought to treat them as such. Keep the kids out of cyberspace.

 

Tayte Christensen is a junior studying history.