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

[Laalaalaand]

My kids like to watch the channel vlad and niki on YouTube. The parents make between 45 and 60 million dollars a year off their YouTube channels which exclusively feature the children. They seem like sweet kids but they must spend a lot of their time filming all these videos. They have action figures of themselves. They live in the lap of luxury and want for nothing materially but i don't think even if i knew how to make these videos etc that would make me use my children to make money. Those videos will be there forever.

Vlad and niki are the two older children and they seem to be featuring less but the parents have had two younger children and the majority of the newer videos seem to focus on the two little ones.

The cynic in me says that maybe the older children have had enough of it, so that's why they're not doing it or maybe they're not "cute" enough now they're pre teens as the target audience is small children.

Would you do it for millions of quid? Could be argued that they're not doing anything actually harmful to the children so why not if it means the children end up rich beyond their wildest dreams.

For 60M a year, I would do it for at least 2 years. But the content that I post would be very particular. None of that recording your child when they’re clearly distressed/tired or upset. Both of my children have disabilities so none of their disabilities would be discussed or touched on.

It’s a tough one but I think if you really want to be specific with the kind of content, it can work. It’d never happen though so not much point thinking about it

There is a mother who was mentioned on here {Mumsnet} who exploits her child who is very young on ''social'' media.

Shockingly, most of the content is of the little girl eating pickles and the comments are disgusting from adult males.

The mother earns millions.

Absolute exploitation of a tiny child.

Hundreds of thousands of predatory masturbating males.

I followed Emily Fauver for a while. She was quite sweet at the time. However , on Tiktok videos of her daughter dancing and jumping on the trampoline with flashes of underwear have been saved many times. Some of the dancing could be viewed as a performance.
Many people have told her that pervs would view the dancing as suggestive. She just laughs it off.
She had another baby last year who is also being trained to react to the constant filming.
It is sad when a 5 year old girl wants to 'talk to my friends' on camera or asks her Mum what people want to see .

I find it astounding that parents are prepared to serve up their kids personal lives for strangers on the internet.
I was recently talking about the Norris Nuts with my children, one of the children Biggie has videos of himself crying and lip syncing to songs because he is imagining his parents have been in an accident- their eccentric parents just seem to laugh at their children's distress.

Closer to home a woman near us posts TikTok's with content like look around my teenage daughters bedroom- literally strangers on their egging her on asking for more daughter content and asking questions about them.
Aside from that it's just her buying cheap shit tat and showing it , buying shit + give it cutesy name = an experience that everyone should copy - I honestly can't wrap my head around it but the fact that everyone at school for example knows every little detail of theses girls private spaces is just so wrong. They seem to think they are local celebrities for doing it.
Humanity is fucked.

Is that UK or US?

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

Which is how OnlyFans works 😡

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!

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.

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'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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Think in USA from accents.

But this account has been roundly condemned.

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

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.

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.

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.

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..

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.

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

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.

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

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.