Commentary: How can Singapore kidfluencers be protected when mum and dad are their bosses?

SINGAPORE: The alarm clock rings in a dim bedroom. Mummy enters to wake eight-year-old twins Leia and Lauren for school. Her voice-over shares that it’s still a struggle to get her girls ready in the morning. Soon, they trot into the kitchen in uniform but before they head off, she prepares a mug of Milo for each of them. “Milo is yummy!” declares Leia and Lauren replies, “And healthy!”. The camera zooms in on a Milo mug as the girls head off to school.

This is one of the latest reels shared by Ember Yong on the Instagram channel she manages for her children, @leialauren.

Listed on influencer marketing platform HypeAuditor as the top kids and toys influencer in Singapore with about 288,000 followers, Ms Yong’s channel chronicles the activities, travel, school and home life of her twin girls and their five-year-old brother Luke.

The posts average 1,000 “likes” with paid posts featuring her cherubic kids promoting everything from cars to tuition centres, fashion and toys. HypeAuditor’s Instagram pricing calculator places the estimated rate for a post on @leialauren at US$1,100 to US$1,500.

THE WORLD OF KIDFLUENCERS

Welcome to the world of child influencers. Kidfluencers, as they’re commonly known, can garner a massive audience on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Take Ryan Kaji, for instance. Ryan, who began his YouTube career at three, is arguably the world’s most popular child YouTuber with 37 million subscribers on his channel Ryan’s World. Now 12, Ryan has reportedly amassed a net worth north of US$100 million.

Kidfluencers primarily attract a young audience, often children like themselves. Reflecting the impact of this trend, a recent Harvard study found that social media platforms collectively made more than US$11 billion in the United States in 2022 by advertising to minors.

With the potential to earn vast sums of money from partnerships and advertising, it would not be a surprise if more parents are considering or aspiring to turn their children into kidfluencers.

Unlike child stars of the past whose public personas were “limited” to their performance-based work, kidfluencers today are filmed at home, in their pyjamas and at the kitchen table. The access to their personal lives is what drives their content and feeds the voyeurism of their audience. They are also subject to immediate feedback on social media, lobbied at them by anonymous followers who can venerate or vilify them any time.

PARENTS AS MANAGERS

Kidfluencers often find themselves working under the guidance of their parents, who act as both managers and guardians. This dynamic raises concerns about how these young talents can be protected when their parents are also their bosses, and their home serves as their workplace.

One extreme example is the Hobson family in the US whose YouTube channel Fantastic Adventures had more than 700,000 followers, with over 240 million views. The channel was run by Machelle Hackney and starred her seven adopted children.

Hackney not only kept all the money made from the channel, she would hit, pepper-spray, sexually assault them or withhold food if they did not comply with production requirements or simply forgot their lines.

In their eagerness to garner views, some lines may be crossed even in less extreme cases. The desire for online engagement and monetisation can lead parents to engage in debatable practices, such as pranking their children for views and likes. 

In Singapore, influencer Naomi Neo faced backlash in 2022 after she posted a TikTok video of a prank she played on her then-four-year-old son. While her son is not a kidfluencer in his own right, he is featured regularly on her social media.

Neo and her husband let her son watch what seemed like a dance video on the phone, then ran out of the room, locking their son in it, as a “ghost” appears on the screen. Neo’s son appeared frightened, screaming and crying. The video gained 22.9 million views.

Other pranks Neo has pulled on her son, resulting in tears, included pretending he had become invisible (over 14 million views) and pretending she was not there to pick him up from preschool (54.1 million views).

WHO PROTECTS KIDFLUENCERS?

Are kidfluencers protected legally?

Laws in France and the state of Illinois in the US require that earnings from social media activities be placed in trust accounts for minors, ensuring that the money is safeguarded for their future. The Illinois law protects even children who are not held out to be kidfluencers, so long as, within a 30-day period, they appear in at least 30 per cent of a video or online content for which the adult is being paid.

California is also considering similar legislation to not only protect the earnings of child influencers but also give them the right to request the deletion of content once they reach adulthood.

In Singapore, laws exist to regulate the employment of children and young persons, prohibiting children below 13 years old from being employed. However, the focus is on the type of work children can undertake in industrial settings versus non-industrial settings, and there are no express regulations for the work of child actors or kidfluencers.

This is perhaps because such work is considered to be “participation in artistic performances”, which is an exception to the prohibition of child labour under Convention 138 issued by the International Labour Organization that Singapore has ratified.

Is there a need for Singapore’s laws need to evolve to protect the rights of kidfluencers, especially when it is their parents who manage them?

It must first be recognised that so long as money is generated, kidfluencing is work. The money kidfluencers earn ought to be protected for them. Clear guidelines regarding work hours and conditions may need to be established.

Although enforcing such limits becomes more challenging when filming is in the children's home rather than on a professional set, we must take the first steps in addressing this issue.

The impact of kidfluencing remains understudied. But when we consider the history of child actors who were pushed into the limelight and managed by their parents, we can see the lasting effects of early exposure to fame and scrutiny, and a glimpse of the challenges kidfluencers may face if mismanaged by their parents.

Brooke Shields’s mother and former manager, Teri Shields, allowed Shields to pose nude for a photoshoot when she was just 10 years old. Drew Barrymore claimed her mother-manager Jaid brought her to parties and nightclubs, where she “had her first drink at nine, smoked pot at 10 and started using cocaine at 12”, according to The Daily Mail. Child actors Daniel Radcliffe and Macaulay Culkin struggled with substance abuse.

As parents, we make decisions for our children every day. Ideally, the emotional well-being of kidfluencers would be a top priority for their parents. However, regulations can offer a much-needed safety net beyond mere hope.

We also need to start thinking about the mental toll on children who have their whole lives exposed, and not necessarily by their own choice.

Ong Pei Ching is a Partner at TSMP Law Corporation