According to a 2021 YouGov survey, 11% of teenage boys and 6% of teenage girls said their dream job was to be a YouTuber or streamer. It’s no wonder kids dream of being influencers: not only did YouGov find that 65% of teens follow at least one influencer, but viewers only really see the glamorous, fun, or adventurous life that makes it to that content creator’s final edit.
But one former child influencer, Shari Franke, daughter of the infamous Ruby Franke, of the 8 Passengers YouTube channel, recently spoke to Utah legislators in the senate to address the very serious hardships child influencers face, particularly in the context of family vlogs. “I want to be clear: there’s never, ever a good reason for posting your children online for money or fame,” she said in a particularly poignant moment of her testimony. “There’s no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger.”
8 Passengers was run by Ruby and then-husband Kevin Franke and featured the couple and their six children — Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell, and Eve. The account reached 2.3 million subscribers at its zenith before petering out in 2022. Ruby was criticized for her parenting, which included harsh punishments like denying her children food; threatening to decapitate her small daughter’s stuffed animal; and making one son sleep on the living room floor for months. In 2023, Ruby and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were found guilty of six charges of felony child abuse. Court documents detail chilling abuse that occurred over the course of months to two of the four children still living with Ruby, and include starvation and beatings.
But Shari’s testimony wasn’t in regard to Ruby’s felony convictions, which occurred after she was no longer living with either of her parents.
“I don’t come to today as the daughter of a felon, nor as a victim of an abnormally abusive mother,” she begins in her testimony. “I come today as a victim of family vlogging.” She later stated “Family vlogging ruined my innocence long before Ruby committed a crime.”
Shari goes on to explain that the goal of her testimony was not to offer a solution to this issue or even to ban family vlogging (at least not at this stage) but to offer first-hand insight on the issue of child influencers as a problem, particularly in the state of Utah. Indeed, while this is an issue that can be found in any state, Utah is a hotbed of family vlogs, Shari posits, due to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (based in Utah) encouraging large families and sharing the Mormon faith around the world. But far from merely recording cute moments or casually turning the camera on from time to time, family vlogging, she says is “24/7 labor.”
“It is a full time job with employees, business credit cards, managers, and marketing strategies,” she says. “The difference between family vlogging and a normal business, however, is that all the children are employees. Children from before they are born to the day they turn 18 have become the stars of family businesses on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media platforms.”
Even when children are paid, as Shari was, it is often done under the table. She went on to describes the money as “a bribe.”
“For example, we’d be rewarded $100 or a shopping trip if we filmed a particularly embarrassing moment or exciting event in our lives,” she said. “Or, other times, simply going on vacation was expected to be payment enough since most kids don’t get to go on regular or expensive trips. Never mind that the child’s labor is actually what paid for the vacation or trip.”
But even in a more perfect situation, the issue of children being asked to trade their privacy for financial gain is tricky: what is the cost of making a childhood public? Of non-stop filming? How can a child consent to this arrangement, particularly when they have no sense of how it might affect them later in life.
“How do we determine how much a child should get paid for appearing in family content? What price is worth giving up your childhood?” she asked.
Even children who say they enjoy creating content, she warns, should be considered skeptically.
“At the time, I told you I had a choice in what was filmed, but I’ve come to learn that every child influencer in a way suffers from Stockholm syndrome,” she said.
Shari concluded that she foresaw this issue only getting worse as more and more child influencers grow up and reckon with everything fame and money ultimately cost them.
“I understand, as Utahns, we don’t appreciate big government overreach,” she said. “But when it comes to protecting children it should be a bipartisan issue. The only people harmed by child influencer laws are the parents exploiting their children.”
