Social media can be a fun, fulfilling creative outlet, but it’s also a highly unregulated space with little protection for creators, especially children. YouTube has a wide array of “kids’ channels” starring young children, and young content creators spend hours shooting videos that can turn a huge profit. There are also many family social media accounts targeted at older audiences but still featuring young children. This frequently comes at the expense of the children, who deserve more legal protections for their work.
In 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom expanded the California Child Actor’s Bill, often called Coogan's Law, to include child social media creators. Coogan’s Law requires 15 percent of a child actor’s earnings be put in a trust fund, which they gain access to upon reaching adulthood. The law ensures child actors are compensated for their work instead of their earnings simply going to their parents. Expanding it to social media is vital because there are no nationwide requirements that child influencers be given any compensation. However, Coogan’s Law notably only applies to workers under contract, which most children on social media are not. Additionally, while these laws allow children to take back financial control as adults, they don’t do much to protect people from abuse and exploitation as minors.
Posting on social media from a young age can be harmful to a child’s development. Those who grow up heavily featured in social media content must maintain a public persona and cannot develop their personalities and desires naturally. Adults with online personas can differentiate the two, but this is harder for children growing up on the internet. Having to fit a brand can stunt this essential development.
Mental health can also be severely impacted; being a social media influencer is stressful, especially for a child. When content becomes highly profitable, there’s more pressure on the child to generate more content. If an account becomes profitable for a child’s parents, what started as a child wanting to make fun videos turns into a career they have no control over. In the case of family content, a child’s every interest, struggle, or personal detail can be monetized, leading to the prioritization of content production over the child’s mental health.
Simply put, child social media creators need legal protections. The current laws don’t do enough to protect them. We need unique protections for young social media creators that regulate working hours, conditions, and privacy. The government must do more to prevent the exploitation of child influencers and ensure they are able to develop like ordinary children and have control over their own lives.