“There is no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger,” said Shari Franke, the eldest child of the YouTube family channel 8 Passengers, in a speech confronting the collapse of her family’s online brand. It is a statement that feels extreme, until you begin to examine what the children in the family vlogging industry are asked to give.
Family vlogging originated as a harmless way to capture milestones, routines, and family life. But in the last decade, it has transformed into a profitable digital industry where the lives of children are consistently monetised, edited, and consumed by millions of strangers, lacking meaningful consent. As audiences grow more comfortable watching childhoods evolve online, the boundaries between private family life and public entertainment become blurred. Unlike child actors, children in the family vlogging industry face no legal protection to express their right to autonomy. There is a lack of restrictions on filming hours, no guarantees of earnings, and absolutely no obligation for the psychological impact of constant exposure to be considered. A childhood that should be full of freedom, nurturing, and stability can soon turn into a system of unpaid, inescapable, and permanent labour.
One of the most unsettling and prominent examples is influencer Piper Rockelle, whose online presence was established before her teenage years. Rockelle’s content frequently centred on scripted “crushes”, performative relationships, and sexualised imagery marketed to a predominantly young audience but, due to its public availability, was also consumed by adults. In 2022, a lawsuit filed by former collaborators accused Rockelle’s mother, Tiffany Smith, of emotional, physical, and sexual misconduct, alleging that children were pressured into inappropriate situations for content. Although this case came to a settlement, it raised serious concerns about consent and power within influencer households.
Despite the release of a Netflix documentary examining the experiences and culture of child influencer exploitation, Rockelle has never publicly addressed the allegations in depth. Now eighteen, her content remains heavily sexualised, still performing a version of herself shaped by audience economy. Her transition into adulthood suggests that when a child’s identity is built and praised around performance, there is no clear point to an end.
Development psychologists stress that adolescence is a critical period for the formation of identity. Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development describes this stage as one defined by the conflict between identity and role confusion, where young people require space to explore who they are, separate from external pressure. When a child’s sense of self is shaped in front of millions, either punished or rewarded by audience metrics, that exploration becomes performance instead of growth. More recent research into self-objectification suggests that constant surveillance can lead individuals to internalise the gaze of observers, prioritising how they appear over how they feel. For children raised online, this may translate into difficulty forming authentic relationships, and a distinction between the self and the brand that becomes blurred.
The collapse of the YouTube family channel 8 Passengers offered a rare disruption in the family vlogging cycle. Formerly presented as wholesome and aspirational, the channel unravelled in 2023 due to the arrest of Ruby Franke for child abuse, and the children spoke out about growing up under the exploitation and surveillance they endured. Unlike many child influencers, some of the Franke children were able to reclaim their narratives about their childhood after the channel ended. Shari Franke has since publicly criticised family vlogging as an industry, arguing that children cannot meaningfully consent to their lives being commodified. Her advocacy has contributed to the protection of child influencers and vlogging from exploitation, highlighting the lack of legal protections for minors whose labour does not conform to traditional entertainment frameworks.
What makes family vlogging uniquely deceptive is its framing as authenticity. Viewers are encouraged to see and feel themselves as part of the family they are engaging with online, blurring ethical boundaries and discouraging scrutiny. This intimacy is what fuels interaction while protecting exploitation from criticism, because harm is harder to acknowledge when concealed as love.
In recent years, some governments have begun to recognise that child influencers exist in a legal grey area. In 2020, France became one of the first countries to introduce legislation recognising children producing online content as workers, granting them protections such as filming hour limits, preservation of earnings, and the right to request removal of content once they reach adulthood. Elsewhere, including in the UK and the United States, regulation remains fragmented, leaving responsibility mainly to the parents, even if financially dependent on exposure online. Without successfully executed safeguarding, both platforms and audiences continue to benefit from a system that prioritises business and engagement over a child’s long-term mental and physical wellbeing.
Recent controversy around X’s AI chatbot Grok, which has generated inappropriate and sexualised content involving minors, further reinforces how little protection children have online, even without being deliberately exposed. If a child can be put at risk for simply existing in a digital space, the danger for children whose lives are actively broadcast for profit becomes impossible to ignore.
Childhood is not content, and consent cannot be given on a child’s behalf for an audience of millions. As long as family vlogging depends on exposure without safeguards, profit will continue to be prioritised over protection. The real question is not whether family vlogging may be ethical, but why we continue to accept an industry built on the absence of a child’s privacy and autonomy.
Words by Nilufar Abedipour
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