A Unique Population

           Only in the last few years has there been widespread discourse about the ethics and interests of family vlogging and child influencers. As the media landscape is continually dominated by online platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, those who post and upload video and photo content (vloggers) can create lucrative businesses with ad sense and brand partnerships. Family vlogging is a popular niche with parents or caregivers posting family (and advertiser) - friendly content about their daily lives. Child influencers, therefore, have become social media figures like adults in the space - garnering up to millions of subscribers who tune in for sometimes daily uploads and watch them grow up. 

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           With money flowing, a low barrier for participation, and little research on the long-term health and financial outcomes for these child influencers, the law has been very behind in protecting their interests. Since most of this content is shot in a family’s home and community, the children’s participation is not seen as the labor that it is. For example, Madison and Kyler Fisher, the managers behind their 3-year-old twins’ content empire that boasts three million subscribers, state that their daughters have a Coogan account for any traditional media earnings, but so long as they provide for their family, “they can decide how the [social media] money is spent,” (NBC News, 2023). Though the Oakley’s say they save some social media earnings for their girls, their position demonstrates the lack of financial guardrails that are enforced for performers in this online industry. 

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Policy

           In 2024, California passed two bills that expand the financial protection for children and minor content creators and performers on social media. Assembly Bill 1880 (AB1880) expands the 1939 Coogan Act to includes child performers/creators on monetized social media platforms.
Parents or guardians are required to set up each minor as the beneficiary of a Coogan Trust Acount with 15% of their gross earnings held until their eighteenth birthday (AB1880, 2024). The accompanying Senate Bill 764 expands on this by making clear definitions of the scope of work: if a minor is featured in at least thirty percent of the monetized video or image, they are performing labor that must be tracked per reporting period. Among other metrics, the number of monetized vlogs, how much money they generated, how many minutes the minor was featured and how much money the minor was compensated are required to be made available (Senate Bill 764 [AB764], 2024). Further, the minor’s parent must promptly set up a trust with guidelines defined above in AB 1880. SB 764 includes enforcement: if the parent or management party violates the law, the court may award the minor “actual damages, punitive damages, [and] cost of the action” if they bring a suit (SB 764).

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History

           The marriage and family field lacks a depth of research and understanding about emotional abuse. Its multi-faceted consequences can make it difficult for many clinicians to understand the vulnerabilities of this client population. It is inevitable that all parents at times fall short of what is considered optimal parenting relative to their culture, socioeconomic status and the needs of their children. Parental mistakes and difficulty economic or medical periods in a family’s life do not always fit neatly into an abuse definition. However, this ambiguity is what makes emotional abuse so difficult to define and thus report and treat. While emotional abuse “is a component in all forms of child abuse” therapists
are advised to take care that ‘a sudden change in (a child client’s) behavior” is not due to a parent’s action or inaction. (Contra Costa County, 2020, paras 6-7). Emotional abuse as a category is unique because of the permissive reporting standard. Indeed, the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act allows reporting upon reasonable suspicion of a child suffering or being at great risk of suffering ailments such as (but not limited to) severe anxiety or depression (PEN § 11166.05, 2005). Unlike reporting physical or sexual abuse or neglect, emotional abuse reporting is not mandated, so there is no penalty to the therapist who does not act. The most commonly reported instance of emotional abuse among licensed marriage and family therapists occurs when a minor witnesses domestic violence (Caldwell, 2022). When the federal government enacted the Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) in 1974, the only definition they left to the states was emotional abuse (Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, 1974, 2023). 

           Since then, steps have been taken to identify and classify emotional abuse in children. Scholars at the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children defined six primary categories of caregiver behavioral that constitutes emotional abuse: spurning, terrorizing, isolating, exploiting/corrupting, denying emotional responsiveness and mental health/medical/legal neglect (Brassard & Donovan, 2006). The severe depression, anxiety, insomnia and other emotional and psychological distress that this treatment can cause a child may be lasting without intensive care and intervention.

           

           In early 2023, Illinois became the first state to pass a law requiring a percentage of earnings to be set aside for minors under age sixteen whose presence, name or likeness are used in at least 30% of monetized content. Although the bill allows minors to sue for damages if the law is breached, the state does not create any enforcement mechanism (Public Act 103-0556). Financial exploitation, though not a child abuse category, can result in harms that may amount to emotional abuse of a minor.

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Impacts

           There is a wide spectrum of potential negative emotional outcomes for minors who may be emotionally damaged from financial exploitation by caregivers. Thompson and Kaplan (1996) note that the beginnings of empirical research on emotional abuse indicate that its effects on development may be profound, but without a widespread application of established assessment methods, further understanding of this abuse is limited. However, psychologists and members of the public alike have observed negative mental health outcomes in many exploited child stars for generations, from Macaulay Culkin to Britney Spears. Licensed psychologist Shauna Springer Ph.D. noted that ‘exploitation by a legal guardian – financially or emotionally – can lead to substance abuse challenges in a child star’ (Rodriguez 2021). Since child influencers also have public platforms where anyone can view their posts, which are often shot in the privacy of their homes or school, the parallels are clear.

           Child influencers with a positive familial and working relationship with their caregiver would be in no distress and therefore there is nothing to consider reporting. However, for those child or parent clients who are in deep distress or have unsafe relationships due to, at least in
part, financial mismanagement or exploitation, it is imperative for a therapist to consider reporting on the child’s behalf. The Board of Behavioral Science (BBS) regulations describe unprofessional conduct as including ‘intentionally or recklessly causes physical or emotional
harm to a client’ (BBS, §1881) By ignoring or refusing to ask about the connection between financial concerns and severe emotional distress, a therapist may be allowing emotional harm to continue.

           Many are familiar with the legal defeat of Utah’s Ruby Franke, the disgraced mother of the massive family vlog channel, 8 Passengers, who was convicted of multiple counts of aggravated child abuse and imprisonment of two of her minor children. (Washington County of Utah, 2024). Though most child influencers will never meet such tragic ends, therapists should be aware of how money and work commitments can impact child and teen clients and their familial relationships.

           

           For well-intention parents, having a county child welfare worker with accounting expertise investigate a report could provide meaningful financial education that they could not have accessed for free otherwise. With county support, parents could set up the infrastructure for their business (to meet all the state’s reporting guidelines) while ensuring their child has the Coogan Trust that they are entitled to. Such support may ease at least some of a minor client’s concerns by assuring that they can anticipate personal pay out for their media content.

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            Initiating a report could also lead to disrupting the acts of any adult who is intentionally violating the law - either because they see it as their right to control all income or because they are willfully exploiting minor performers. For example, eleven members of the former pre-teen group known as “The Squad” generated up to $625,000 per month filming Youtube sketches and challenge videos. In 2021, they filed a civil suit against Tiffany Smith, the manager and mother of one of the pre-teens for financial exploitation, labor rights violations and emotional and sexual abuse. Smith denied the allegations and the case settled for $1,850,000 in 2022. Many of the children’s parents reported ‘trusting that she (Gray) was following guidelines’ (Gelt & Kaufman, 2024). While most circumstances will not reach such extremes, this case demonstrates how easy it is for both minors and their parents to be financially exploited in the content space and how emotional abuse can exist alongside sexual abuse or misconduct. Indeed, half of the 303 Los Angeles youth who were the subject of county welfare investigations ‘were found to have experienced emotional abuse1 in contrast to 9% identified at the time of referral’ (Trickett et al., 2009). Whether child influencers are making millions of dollars or the laws minimum qualifying income, they deserve the be advocated for if financial exploitation is causing them adverse
mental health.

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Debates and Alternatives

           The dearth of evidence demonstrating the long-term psychological impact of financial exploitation of children does not make this issue one that therapists can overlook. Some clinicians may be quick to say that they do not specialize in or even see this population, dismissing the need to re-consider their permissive reporting frameworks. It is worth noting, then, that any parent with a smart phone and a Wi-Fi connection can build social media channels wherein they can monetize content with their child within weeks. The organic growth does not require any managers or Hollywood connections that would filter out bad actors.

           Additionally, a child may present with another problem entirely and a therapist needs to be familiar enough with the financial implications of family vlogging to discern any relationship between severe emotional distress and the entertainment labor. In seeking to advance the marriage and family therapy field to multi-cultural competence, some may point out that creating family content and putting all funds back into the family may be a cultural or religious value that works for everyone, even when the children become adults. Of course, if such circumstances are not creating distress in a child client and the law is being followed, a therapist has nothing to report.

           However, therapists must consider how financial pressures on children to consistently perform and show their personal lives to the internet may create anxiety, stress and depression in some minor clients. If financial exploitation has occurred, it may limit a child’s ability to move forward with their life using the money they are entitled to, further corroding trust bonds with caregivers. For example, former child and adult reality star Jill (Duggar) Dillard alleged in her memoir that her hyper-religious father, who considered their show a ‘ministry,’ withheld funds from her that he reported as income to avoid taxes. After refusing to provide retroactive payment and review a bad-faith contract, Dillard’s father, she alleges, offered a one-time payment of $80,000 to her and each of her adult siblings in exchange for the rights to their social media proceeds in perpetuity. A few of her adult siblings, she reports, took their father’s deal happily (Duggar, 2023). The depression and betrayal Dillard describes feeling and influenced her refusal of the proposed deal as an adult, further fraying her relationship with her parents. The Duggar family’s intergenerational strains and allegations of exploitation in traditional and social media family-based channels illustrate how emotional abuse varies in presentation in members of the same family.

           Clinicians familiar with SB 764 and AB 1880 and published guidelines on emotional abuse will be well suited to consider if making a report is in the client’s best interest. The minor’s ability to civilly sue their parents upon turning eighteen is not a means of offloading a therapist’s responsibility to consider if emotional abuse is a primary result of financial exploitation. A lawsuit initiated by the minor client either immediately or upon their adulthood uses substantial time, financial and emotional resources. If a minor performer demonstrates severe emotional distress related to perceived or demonstrable financial mismanagement of their labor, it is up to the therapist to initiate an opportunity for CPS to investigate these concerns. 
For enforcement’s sake, it is reasonable for child protective services offices to have access to an auditor or forensic accountant to investigate these claims. No matter the circumstance, children experiencing emotional distress related to financial mismanagement are deserving of advocates who provide the support that stops financial exploitation and minimize its psychological impacts.

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References

Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2024). Statutes and regulations relating to the practices of professional clinical counseling marriage and family therapy educational psychology (§ 1845.6c, 1881.w). California Board of Behavioral Sciences. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/publications/lawsregs.pdf

Brassard, Marla & Donovan, Kera. (2006). Defining psychological maltreatment. Child abuse and neglect: Definitions, classifications, and a framework for research. 151-197, Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Caldwell, B. E. (2022). Basics of California law for LMFTs, LPCCs, and LCSWs. High Pass Education.

California AB1880 | 2023-2024 | Regular Session. (2024). LegiScan. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1880/id/3008771

California Code, PEN 11166.05. (1987). 
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=11166.05.&lawCode=PEN

Child Abuse Prevention Council of Contra Costa County. (2020, May). Frequently asked questions by Mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. https://capc-coco.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Mandated-Reporter-FAQs-2020.pdf

Duggar, J. (2023). No Agreement. In Counting the Cost. Simon and Schuster.

Efforts to protect child influencers will continue to ramp up in 2024. (2023, December 26). NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/child-influencer-family-vlogger-protection-laws-rcna127674

Gelt, J., & Kaufman, A. (2024, October 10). YouTube star Piper Rockelle’s mom settles influencers’ lawsuit - Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-10-10/youtube-influencer-piper-rockelle-mother-lawsuit-settlement

Public Act 103-0556 Illinois General Assembly - Full text of Public Act 103-0556., SB 1782 (n.d.). https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/fulltext.asp?Name=103-0556

Rodriguez, K. (2021, August 13). We spoke to a psychologist about child stars and the impact of an unstable family. https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/karla-rodriguez/child-stars-family-financial-issues

Senate Bill No. 764 Minors: Online platforms. (2024, September 27). California Legislative Information. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB764

Thompson A.E., Kaplan C.A. (1996). Childhood emotional abuse. British Journal of Psychiatry, 168(2), 143-148. doi:10.1192/bjp.168.2.143

Trickett, P. K., Mennen, F. E., Kim, K., & Sang, J. (2009, January 29). Emotional abuse in a sample of multiply maltreated, urban young adolescents: Issues of definition and identification. Child Abuse & Neglect. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.12.003

Utah vs Franke/Hildebrandt. (2024, March 22). Washington County. https://www.washco.utah.gov/departments/attorney/case-highlights-media/utah-vs-franke-hildebrandt/

 

1 This study defines and categorizes emotional abuse according to Brassard and Donovan’s framework.

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