To ask would you exploit your kids on YouTube for millions of £s?

No and I firmly believe there should be tighter regulations about using children in this manner.

Is it any different to:

politicians putting their families on camera during campaigns.

parents who have decided that their child is the next big footballer so their childhood is dominated by training.

children performing on BGT or the Voice Kids

reality TV including children.

there should be similar to child actors set up saying that a portion of the money earned needs to go in trust to them. They should have to comply with child labour laws but social media is just a media platform like all of the others.

if you could guarantee that I could make 60 million a year tbh there isn’t much I wouldn’t do.

I despise it, children should not be there to make parents money, yes they likely spend money on the children but would they have it without them? Also when the children are older do they get the millions that THEY have made for their parents? I highly doubt it, I don't agree with children being on YouTube at all anyway my daughter wanted to post videos and I told her no, you don't know who is watching these videos and as parents we need to protect our children not shove them in the limelight where they can be targeted

What was the name of the podcast? I'd be really interested in listening! @CheeseWisely

Very common. There are “child gymnast” accounts on instagram openly advertising the child (or others) for sale - email and phone numbers attached and many horny comments in various languages with aubergine emojis underneath.

I’ve reported them. Let me assure you, they do not and will not remove these accounts.

Parents have no idea how prolific this is.

I have always viewed the Kaji family as sinister. Exploiting one then three children like that. Absolutely fundamentally wrong.

That’s really disturbing!

These days there will be as much risk from children using their own smartphones to film videos themselves. In a sense it’s less worrying as there isn’t a parent exploiting them. But actually in some ways even more worrying, because if there’s no parental oversight at all, they are directly at risk from predators who may still find ways to contact them.

Posting to YouTube is bad for children too because from a young age they will be conditioned to chase likes and followers. Which for girls in particular often come from learning to objectify, beautify and sexualise themselves.

And honestly if YouTube creators could see mugshots of who’s actually watching their videos I think most of them would stop!

I understand that. But as a parent who is likely to die while my child is still very much dependent on full time care, being able to remove all the financial barriers that come with that would probably be a risk worth taking. The 100% chance of being able to afford the best quality care for them for the rest of their lives would outweigh the smaller chance of their image (not actually them, their image) being artificially manipulated and used exploitatively by others.

Back in the real world where nobody is guaranteed to earn anything from posting their kids online, let alone £60m a year, it remains an abhorrent thing to do and should be illegal.

I reported a video I saw on you tube- {about 10 yrs ago}

A man had replied to a comment I'd made, and I clicked on his profile- he had ''saved'' videos of a young girl doing ''gym'' in her bedroom, all on her own in unsuitable clothing {To appeal to predators}

Her parent /s must have set her up with a webcam and clothes specifically for this.

This poor little child had lots of comments saying ''She does requests'' {For specific movements} and the parent /s were raking in the ad revenue.

I was horrified, and reported it to you tube, saying how absolutely dangerous it was and child exploitation.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42110068

Never. I wouldn’t do this to my child. Okay we won’t have millions of pounds but she is safe and loved and not being used as a money making tool. I can live with that.

No it’s exploitation, I think it’s wrong as a parent to do that to your children. I wouldn’t post my kids on social media anyway. You just don’t know who is looking at them..

Absolutely not.

You have no idea whose watching the content and I've seen in the past vile people using images of edited (and sometimes non edited) SM children on the dark web and other seedy sites.

And also a ban on children appearing in humiliating, degrading or sexualised content - no more filming naked or in underwear/nappies, potty training content, periods.
No filming or monetising content of children in distress or being punished.

No, I wouldn't do it to my own children and I think there should be much stricter rules on child performance.

• performance permits for children appearing in monetised content
• limit to filming hours
• independent on-set chaperones monitoring child welfare during filming
• close monitoring of education ensuring these children actually go to school or have proper tutoring
• a decent amount of the money (eg 50%) being kept aside for the child for when they turn 18.

Think in USA from accents.

But this account has been roundly condemned.

www.parents.com/mom-of-tiktok-preschooler-wren-eleanor-facing-backlash-8612986

Absolutely not. I bet it's not worth it. On another note, my DS got obsessed with watching their videos so we had to ban YouTube. His behaviour was awful while he was allowed to watch it and improved drastically once we banned it. I found that very interesting.

my child knows aomeone from one of these families. The child is a really nice, well-balanced and well-travelled kid.

personally, I wouldn’t do it, as I find it very odd and exploitative but they seem to be the acceptable face of all this. They’ve made millions from it all and have spin offs.

Same here! YouTube on the whole is banned now, I'm generally quite relaxed about screen time but YouTube/YouTube kids are a hard no for my daughter.

My neighbour does this on TikTok and Insta - massively over sharing her kids private medical information and bad behaviour and making them perform for product placement ads - plus infantilising her ‘little boys’. Their address, school etc are easily identifiable.
They are bullied at school and she posts on our road WhatsApp about strangers knocking on her door late at night but she can’t see any connection…..
I hope she is saving some if the money for the therapy they are going to need when they are older.
It’s abusive.

I'm old enough to remember Jon & Kate plus 8 & how destructive that whole set up was for their children in the long term. As tempting as all the money is, it's really not worth the fall out & harm that this sort of exploitation can cause.

YouTube is better than Instagram I think, because in recent years it’s largely stopped anyone commenting on videos created by under 16s. They were made to do this by public pressure.

I can see how that could be the case.

But a lot of people have separate YouTube profiles for each family member. When you open up the app on a TV it asks who’s watching. Each account has a different algorithm and serves up different content depending on the viewing history and YouTube’s idea of who each viewer is.

So the adult accounts shouldn’t have any kids content at all.

The analytics will be massively skewed though, as most kids watch these videos on tvs and tablets set up by their parents, and I'd bet most family tvs are set up by the dad. Hence most popular target for most kids crap is males aged 25-34. Doesn't mean the men are actually watching though!

Which is how OnlyFans works 😡

Is that UK or US?

Because wouldn't Social Services or Child Protection have a view on that?