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Front Burner Transcript for March 20, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme Poisson.

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[video clip of a child]

JAYME POISSON: It may be hard to believe, and this is probably going to make a lot of you feel very old, but that video went viral 17 years ago. It marked a very specific time on the internet and in the world of family vlogging. Suddenly, families could make serious money just by uploading a video of their child to YouTube. And with that, family influencers were born. Now, of course, all you have to do today is open up TikTok or Instagram to see your favourite online kid known as gen alpha influencers. These are kids born between 2010 and 2024, and they have millions of followers, some of who have watched them since birth. Today, I'm talking to Fortesa Latifi. She's been looking into this multi-billion dollar family influencer industry. She covers influencer culture, and recently published a three-part series and mini doc for Cosmopolitan called The Sharenting Reckoning. We're going to talk about what happened to those original family vlogger kids, and whether these gen alpha influencers are being exploited by their parents for views.

JAYME POISSON: Hi, Fortesa. Thank you so much for coming onto the show and doing this with us today.

FORTESA LATIFI: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

JAYME POISSON: So when do you first remember there being this obsession with following the lives of kids literally from, I guess, birth?

FORTESA LATIFI: You know, I think that this really started around 2005 when the first mommy blogs took off. And at that time, like mommy blogs were a new thing. This wasn't something that we had. We didn't have mom influencers. We didn't have parent influencers. And people got really into these people's lives. And then we had YouTube take off. And so some family vloggers started migrating there and making content there. And of course, like the video content was even more interesting than the written content. And then we had Instagram and TikTok, and now we are where we are.

JAYME POISSON: And talk to me a little bit about, you know, what kind of content these vloggers were making initially. What did it look like?

FORTESA LATIFI: Sure. So initially, the interesting thing about mommy bloggers, at least early when they started around 2005, is that a lot of their content was around how motherhood wasn't perfect. And I think that it's easy to take for granted now that we have conversations about how difficult motherhood specifically is and parenthood. But back then, we didn't really have those conversations publicly, and these moms were coming online and saying, hey, actually, being a mom is really hard. And I had a mental breakdown today and I don't know what to do. And so that was really like fresh content that people weren't getting from anyone. And then it kind of turned into the Instagram era of mom influencing where everything had to be picture perfect. And now, we're kind of swinging back around to like, what I call like the hot mess mom, where she's like, you know, I'm a disaster, but this is what real life looks like. So it's kind of interesting how it changes.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah, that is a really interesting trajectory to think about. And then what about the kids? Like how have the kids’ roles evolved over time?

FORTESA LATIFI: I think the kids’ roles have really blossomed. In the beginning with mommy Bloggers, it was really about the parents, and you didn't get to know the kids as much. But now, the kids are characters in their own rights, and they have their own social media platforms with hundreds of thousands of followers. And they're kind of like these little characters that people love to follow.

JAYME POISSON: I know as part of your investigation, you actually spoke with a young woman who is part of one of these influencer families. I think they started back in the 2010 era, and she's in her 20s now. And I know that you're protecting her identity, but what did she tell you about what it was like for her growing up with her life, you know, online in one way or another?

FORTESA LATIFI: I think one of the most striking things that she told me was just how much pressure she felt knowing that so much of her family's financial health was dependent on the content that they made.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It’s the amount of responsibility that I felt at a young age for things that no child should have to worry about, whether there's food on the table or whether we're making monthly payments on our house or where our next paycheque is going to come from.

FORTESA LATIFI: She would have to stay up until, you know, 1 or 2 in the morning retaking and retaking this shoot or a video to make sure that it was perfect. And if her mom didn't think that her smile was bright enough or that she was, you know, saying her lines with enough enthusiasm, it would kind of devolve into like, well, do you not care about our family? Do you not want us to make our mortgage payment next month? And so I think the pressure was really striking to me.

JAYME POISSON: And, you know, I know there's one part where she talks about doing sponsored posts and stuff, right? Tell me a little bit more about that.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah, she did a lot of sponsored content. So her mom had a lot of brand deals, and her daughter was included in those, not only creating the content with her, but scripting it and starring in it. And Vanessa actually told me that when she had her first menstrual cycle, her mom got them a sponsored post around sanitary pads.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I had to pose with my sanitary pads and like do a video of them and talk about like my period experience, and that was so mortifying to me. Being only like 14 at the time, I just felt like I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

JAYME POISSON: You know, when she looks back at that time and she reflects on her childhood, did she feel like she had one?

FORTESA LATIFI: No. She said that being the child of an influencer parent, that you have to grow up really fast. I think just her awareness of how much financial stress the family could be in if she wasn't, you know, compliant was really stressful to her. And she said it felt like she had to grow up a lot faster than other kids. And she said around the time she was 10, she went to another young friend's house, and she was like astonished that like they didn't have to worry about finances or making content or anything. And so I think that really shows the difference between her childhood and other childhoods.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I've come across a lot of people in college that know my mom from her blog, and that's always such a weird experience for me that other people know me and perceive me in a specific way. I have no control over my image or my voice or my story. So just knowing that that's out there forever, it's just overwhelming. It's hard to conceive sometimes even.

JAYME POISSON: You mentioned the mother saying that they need to make their mortgage payments. And when we're talking about money here, I wonder if you can give me a sense of, you know, how much money we're talking about and how it's changed over time, how these influencers have been making money.

FORTESA LATIFI: Sure. So this is a multibillion dollar industry, which is pretty astonishing. And I think people don't realize how much money is in it. I mean, at the low end, it's, you know, a couple of thousand dollars for a brand deal or something. But at the high end, these people are making hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars a year.

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FORTESA LATIFI: The money on social media is crazy.

FORTESA LATIFI: How much would you make off of brand deals?

FIRST UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Low six figures. You know, we bust our ass in full time jobs, and one like 15 second video would make my entire paycheque.

FORTESA LATIFI: Let's say on an average month, how much money do you make from TikTok?

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Between 3000 and 7000.

FORTESA LATIFI: And it depends on how you get paid. So in America, we have like the TikTok creator fund. So if you have over, I believe it's 10,000 followers, you get paid based on the amount of views that you get on TikTok. And that's the same for YouTube. You get paid based on the amount of views that you have. And then besides just getting paid for views, you also have sponsored posts or brand deals. So these people have hugely varying amounts of income and different streams of income.

JAYME POISSON: Mm hmm. You can certainly see the allure, hey?

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah.

JAYME POISSON: So I want to talk a little bit more with you about what some of these influencers are saying to you. But before we get into that, you know, let's talk a bit more about the criticisms and concerns around what they're doing. And so what are the main criticisms and concerns here?

FORTESA LATIFI: So the criticisms and concerns are that these kids don't have privacy, that they can be overworked because there's really, at least in the US, there's only one state that has legislation at all regarding influencer children, and it's about the profit that they bring in. It's not about, you know, like work hours or anything that we have in other areas of child labour. People are worried that their privacy is exploited, that their vulnerable moments are exploited, that they're going to grow up with this online footprint that they didn't ask for, sometimes reaching back to gestation, which is really striking. So there are a lot of worries. And there's really this cultural reckoning, I think, happening around child influencers and family vloggers.

JAYME POISSON: I know that you spoke to some of the big ones right now, like The Bucket List Family. I've definitely seen these guys pop up on my Instagram feed. They have five million followers, The Gaza Crew, 4.8 million followers, and This Mad Mama. And so just give me a snapshot of the kind of things that they're sharing online like today.

FORTESA LATIFI: Sure. So The Bucket List Family, their whole shtick is that they travel the world with their three children. And so it's a lot of travel content.

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DAD: My wife and I and our kids are about to go on a trip around the world, and we're going to sell everything we own in our little apartment, and then we're going to go westward. We do currently live in Provo, Utah.

MOM: 2020, it's a big year.

DAD: We’ve set a big goal.

MOM: A New Year's resolution.

DAD: Together as a family, we're going to…

KIDS: Good morning, friend, Mexico.

MOM: So we've been in Bhutan now for over a week. We've been spending a lot of time with the monks at the monasteries.

FORTESA LATIFI: They've faced some backlash because they tend to not shy away from posting their kids in vulnerable moments, whether they're crying or, there's a video of their daughter saying goodbye to her deceased great grandmother's casket.

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[video clip of child singing]

FORTESA LATIFI: That there's some really intensely vulnerable moments. And so people feel very specifically about that family.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, The Gaza Crew, I saw one where their seven-year-old twin daughters are posting like get ready with me videos in Sephora hauls.

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Video clips: So like I got this new moisturizer from glow recipe cause they love me. Time to put this baby on. We're gen alpha influencers, of course we are at Sasquatch Skincare. We're gen alpha influencers, of course our favourite stores are Sephora and Ulta. We’re gen alpha influencers.

JAYME POISSON: Those videos have caused a lot of conversations too, right?

FORTESA LATIFI: Oh yeah. I mean, that goes back to the whole like Sephora kids thing. But when I talked to Adria, the mom behind The Gaza Crew, she was like, this is satirical. We're just joking around. Like the kids know that they're like playing a role. But it's difficult, right, because at seven, I think you're still figuring out what's real and what's not, generally. And so I think it can be difficult to tell the difference between that. And like people were really, really obsessed with that video in kind of a bad way. Like there was a lot of hate going around about why are these seven-year-olds allowed to do this? Why are they doing Sephora hauls? And so, you know, I mean, I think that speaks to once you put things out there, you don't know how they're going to be received.

JAYME POISSON: I've seen people talk about this idea of like a fractured identity, right, when the kids don't really know which part of themselves are their real selves and which part of themselves are themselves in front of like an iPhone camera. How do the parents justify it, right? Like when you're talking to them, what do they say about why they keep doing it?

FORTESA LATIFI: So The Bucket List Family dad, he said, this is our family album. These are our home videos. This is just I'm a normal dad. I take out the camera when something interesting or, you know, poignant is happening. And I think that's something that you hear a lot from family vloggers, is that they're kind of creating their own memories. But I mean, there's the question there of like we all have home videos from our childhoods, you know, but they're not all posted to millions of people. And then for Adria, I think she was saying that her daughter, this is her way of allowing her daughters to kind of be in the entertainment industry while being able to keep an eye on them because they're only in her house, you know, they're not like out on a set somewhere. And so it's kind of allowing them to explore their creativity in that way. But I mean, there's no way that you can look at all of this and not think about the enormous amounts of money that are at stake as well.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. Yeah. And I know, you know, some of the parents that you talked to talked about college funds for their kids.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We do a lot with toy companies. It's just fun for them. They love it. They don't see it as work. But obviously, they're making money doing it. And so it definitely is something that is going to help provide for their future.

JAYME POISSON: I don't know if they said this to you, but I was thinking maybe, you know, I'm sure at least some of them can make the argument, they can make money while being with their kids as opposed to like out at work, right? So I assume there's all sorts of ways that one could try to justify what's going on. Are any of them kind of struggling with it?

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah, I do think that they're thinking about the controversy that's going on around them. I talked to one young mom. I think she's 24 and she has a million followers on TikTok, and she said that she can't help but question sometimes, like am I exploiting my kid? Like is this what I'm doing? But at the same time, like she's a young single mom, and like you said, this allows her to like stay at home with her child and probably give her a life that might not have been possible otherwise. And so I think they're grappling with it. But at the same time, it's such an enormous opportunity that I think it's difficult to fully turn away from.

JAYME POISSON: There is one example, I wonder if we could talk about a little bit, that you discuss in your piece. So one of the moms, Veronica Merritt, who runs the account, This Mad Mama, she has 12 kids, I think, right?

FORTESA LATIFI: Yes.

JAYME POISSON: And there's this post where she posts a video of her two daughters, and she calls the younger kid the weird kid at school, and the older kid the popular and bubbly kid. And just tell me a little bit about what ended up happening there.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah. So she posted this video, and it was kind of, I think, showing like how different her daughters are. Like yeah, there's this one who's kind of bubbly. There's this one who she calls kind of weird and like maybe a little bit more introverted. And she posted the video, and it was doing really well.

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VERONICA MERRITT: And my younger daughter said she kind of felt embarrassed about it because it seems almost like I'm insulting her. And it wasn't my intention.

FORTESA LATIFI: Veronica, the mother, was telling me about this, and I asked, okay, what did you do? And she was like, well, I decided that the fair thing to do would be to split the profits.

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VERONICA MERRITT: So I agreed with both of the girls that I wouldn't take any of the money from that video, that I was splitting it 50-50 with them.

FORTESA LATIFI: She said, you know, it was doing too well to just like take down, but at least, this way, they could get some money from it. And last time I checked with her, the video had made like $1,100, so they'd gotten about 550 each.

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VERONICA MERRITT: She didn't want me to delete the video. They didn't want me to take it down, but they were happy about getting the money.

JAYME POISSON: I imagine some of these kids are old enough to read the comments though, right? Which can be brutal.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah, the comments. I mean, you know how the internet is, right? Like the internet is not the nicest place all the time. And yeah, these kids are old enough to read that. And Veronica told me that sometimes, her kids will read comments about themselves or about their mom and come to them, come to their mom and say, you know, what is this about? And she kind of has to steer them away from that. But yeah, I mean, I can imagine that that's really difficult because like here's my thing with this entire story, is that growing up is so hard already and it is so fraught and it is so intense. And I just cannot imagine having that big of an audience to watch.

JAYME POISSON: And some of these kids are like real celebrities, right? There's another anecdote that you tell where one of the other moms that you spoke to, she's in Dubai, and they're getting like surrounded by like a bunch of fans.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah, totally. I mean, that's the thing, right, is like celebrities aren’t… like these kids are celebrities. Like I think it's hard to put a number on it. Like once you pass what amount of followers are you a celebrity? I'm not really sure what that amount is. But like if you have millions of followers, like you are a celebrity and you are living that life. But it's interesting because the influencer kids don't have a defined role to hide behind. Like this is something I think about a lot, is that like the celebrities, the kid celebrities from like my youth, like Macaulay Culkin was famous for being Kevin McCallister, right?

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MACAULAY CULKIN: You guys give up or you’re thirsty for more.

FORTESA LATIFI: Or like Hilary Duff was famous for being Lizzie McGuire.

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HILARY DUFF: Best dressed here I come.

FORTESA LATIFI: But like these kids are famous for being themselves.

JAYME POISSON: Right. And of course, we know hearing from them now how much pressure people like Macaulay Culkin and Hilary Duff faced. Another character you spoke to that I want to talk to you about is the nanny, right? There was a nanny that worked with one of these influencer families. And what did she tell you about what she witnessed and how she felt about it?

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah, she thought it was really intense. There was a lot of work going on behind the scenes. And I think that's something that people take for granted, is that I don't know why, but we tend to think that content creation is not that much work, but it is an enormous amount of work.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There was always drama. You're always filming. You’re always having to look a certain way. So if you were being filmed, that you didn't come off on the camera looking bad.

FORTESA LATIFI: And so she would say, you know, she would get the kids home from school, they would feed them, and then it would be hours of, you know, creating and filming and taking pictures. And sometimes, the kids just really didn't want to do it. You know, like they're kids. Sometimes, kids don't want to do things. And she told me that sometimes, the mom of the family would be like, but you're TikTok family wants to see you. Or like, you know this is how we make our money. Like you have to do this. And so there was a level of what she called guilt tripping.

JAYME POISSON: Ha, your TikTok family. That's interesting.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. When I see them, like the first thing that I think about as someone with two little kids is like, I can't even get my own kids to stand in the same frame together. I can't even imagine how much time and effort some of these, you know, videos of choreographed routines or whatever take.

JAYME POISSON: You did talk to some parents that have stopped sharing their kids, though. And talk to me a little bit about what happened when they did that and why they did that.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah, it's interesting because there really is what feels like this kind of small movement within the influencer industry of even people who created platforms of millions of followers off of sharing their kids are starting to rethink that decision. And I think it has to do with the cultural reckoning that I mentioned and kind of the conversation and zeitgeist where people are like, wait, are we overdoing this? And it's interesting because one of the people that I talked to, his name is Grant. He had, he has millions of followers on both TikTok and YouTube, and he was making six figures a year in brand deals.

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GRANT: There was this one trip when I went to Disney that I noticed they were looking more at the camera and what to say and are enjoying it, but then they would constantly look over to see if I'm recording or if I'm taking a picture. I was just like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? And that was it. Just like this stopped.

FORTESA LATIFI: I asked how much he's made since he took his kids off line. He said zero.

JAYME POISSON: Wow.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah.

JAYME POISSON: And what did he say about that massive loss of income? Is it worth it?

FORTESA LATIFI: I mean, yeah, it was interesting because he always kept a full time job, which is not usually what happens with influencer families. So I think he felt less kind of beholden to that income. But he said that once he realized what he was doing, and these are his words, like being part of that exploitation, he was like…

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GRANT: Once you realize what you're doing and the dangers of it, it could have been a million dollars, I don't care.

JAYME POISSON: I feel like I have to ask about the darker corners of the internet here because I imagine that's where some people's heads are probably going. There can be really dangerous and exploitative spaces, of course. And so do we know anything about where some of this content is ending up?

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you read that New York Times article that was like the marketplace of influencer girls managed by moms and stalked by men. But that was, I mean, it was basically everyone's like worst fear about what this content is being used for like come to life. And they were able to do some really incredible research into finding out like what kind of followers, like what kind of people are following these accounts of young girls specifically. And yeah, it is really worrisome. And I think you don't want to be an alarmist, but at the same time, like it is true that, you know, a lot of men are following these accounts, a lot of grown men are following these accounts and they're really glad for this plethora of content.

JAYME POISSON: Mm hmm. Yeah. I saw in your piece like some moms say that they're kind of changing the way that they're shooting their kids. So not in their diapers, or I guess not like in a dance uniform.

FORTESA LATIFI: Yeah, not swimming and stuff like that.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. I imagine that doesn't make that all go away, though. We've started this conversation by talking about the young woman who was part of the first generation of online kids. But, you know, obviously, things have really exploded now. We're in kind of more of Wild West territory with TikTok. And so, you know, as this new generation of kids grows up online, you know, what kind of conversations and reckonings do you think that we will have in another 20 years?

FORTESA LATIFI: Well, I think that we're going to look back at this time 20 years from now and think, I cannot believe how unregulated this industry was. And I think people do that with child actors. They look back at the time before child actor laws and they think, I can't believe we let that happen. And even with child actor laws, you see how difficult it is for many child actors to come out of that lifestyle. And so I think we're going to look back on this and just think, how did we let this go so far?

JAYME POISSON: Okay. Fortesa, thank you so much.

FORTESA LATIFI: Thank you for having me.

JAYME POISSON: All right, that's all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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The dark side of family influencers - Transcript

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