Utah joins the debate over child influencer rights
Utah may be poised to join Illinois, Minnesota and California in creating legal protections for child influencers. State Rep. Doug Owens (D) opened a discussion during an interim session of the Utah legislature on Wednesday to gauge support of a potential bill overseeing how parents use and profit from their children online. The hearing featured comments from Shari Franke, the daughter of former mom blogger Ruby Franke, who was arrested on child abuse charges in 2023.
Owens has spoken with both Shari Franke and Kevin Franke, Ruby Franke’s estranged husband, about the bill. The legislation would address the compensation of child influencers, dictating that a certain percentage of the earnings from monetized content featuring their likeness must be put into a trust that they can access when they turn 18. (The laws in Illinois, Minnesota and California all have similar protections.)
“If [influencing] becomes big business for the parents, there ought to be some protection for the kid down the road, making sure they get some compensation when they reach adulthood,” Owens said. He’s also considering including language that allows children, upon reaching adulthood, to request to have content removed. It mirrors a bill introduced (but not yet passed) in Maryland that includes a nod to the European legal doctrine of the “right to be forgotten.”
Though there isn’t data on which states have the highest concentration of parent influencers, experts often point to Utah as a hotbed. “Any legislation to protect the children of influencers in any state matters, but it will have one of the biggest impacts in Utah just because of the sheer number of mom influencers who are operating in the state,” said Jo Piazza, journalist and host of Under the Influence, a podcast that examines the role of mom influencers in society.
Kevin Franke is among the Utah legislation’s advocates. In 2023, his estranged wife, Ruby Franke, was arrested and charged with multiple counts of aggravated child abuse alongside her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt. The arrest came after Ruby Franke’s son appeared at a neighbor’s house “emaciated and malnourished, with open wounds and duct tape around the extremities,” according to officials. After pleading guilty, Ruby Franke was sentenced to at least four years in prison. Her case has served as an impetus for the introduction of bills and the signing of laws aimed at protecting influencer children.
“Nobody wants the tragedies of their lives to be used as the justification for making social change,” Kevin Franke said in an interview. “Especially tragedies that were as horrific and nightmarish as these were. But I will say that, for me personally, it feels a little bit like a work of redemption. It’s like a silver lining around these tragedies.”
Kevin Franke understands that there may be some skepticism regarding his role in advocating protections for influencer kids after he and Ruby Franke ran a YouTube channel called 8 Passengers. The channel, which had 2.5 million subscribers, featured videos about the family’s daily life, with scenes showing Ruby Franke preparing dinner or driving her kids around. Some videos sparked concern among viewers, including one in which Ruby Franke documented her refusal to take her young child a lunch after the child forgot to bring it to school, or one in which her son discussed sleeping on a bean bag for months as a punishment.
But Kevin Franke believes his role as former family vlogging royalty makes him the right messenger. “Since we stopped family blogging, I have come to learn and see for myself, and see in my own family and in my own children, the devastating impacts and influences that sharing their lives and sharing our family publicly has caused,” he said.
He hopes the legislation will include the documented right to say “no” to being filmed and the right to join a child influencers union, among other protections. “It is extremely hard for a child influencer to merge back into normal life after they’ve been a child influencer,” he said. “It impacts the psychology of that child. They begin to view themselves differently. They begin to view the world differently. It’s very hard for them to come back from that.”
He also hopes attention will be paid to the social media companies themselves, which he says promote and incentivize content featuring children.
Shannon Bird, a Utah-based mom influencer, also supports the possible legislation. At influencer events in Utah, she’s seen how much work goes into YouTube-based content specifically (Bird’s preferred platforms include Instagram and a now-defunct blog that she deleted after her son was bullied for its contents).
“These kids are full-on memorizing scripts for YouTube,” she said. “I’m like, this is a lot. But then I see the parents buying ginormous mansions off the backs of the actual kids [who] are doing 100 percent of the work. I hope that those kids get some kickbacks as well.”
If the legislation is introduced and passed, Bird would be legally required to compensate her own children when they appear in monetized content (such as a recent ad she did for melatonin for children). “They honestly should be paid,” she said. “It does not bother me at all.”
Shari Franke, 21, the eldest Franke child, expressed support for the possible legislation in a prepared statement just a day after announcing her upcoming memoir, “The House of My Mother,” to be released in 2025. “I don’t come today as the daughter of a felon, nor a victim of an abnormally abusive mother. I come today as a victim of family vlogging,” she said. “My goal is not to present any idea of a solution to this problem, but to shed light on the ethical and monetary issues that come from being a child influencer. There is no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger.”
She also explained the work involved in being a child influencer. Sometimes, she said, she and her siblings were rewarded with $100 if they filmed a “particularly embarrassing moment” or “exciting event.” Other times, perks such as going on vacation were “expected to be payment enough … never mind the fact that the child’s labor was the thing that paid for the vacation or trip.”
Shari Franke detailed private moments that were broadcast to the world, including a video made during her teenage years that showed her crying after her eyebrows were accidentally waxed off (the Franke YouTube channel was taken offline in 2022). “Or the time I was violently ill, and got the leading role in the video that day,” she said. “The camera never stops and there is no such thing as a break from filming.”
She asked the legislature to begin by considering financial protections for influencer children. “I also understand that, as Utahns, we don’t appreciate big government overreach,” she said. “But when it comes to protecting children, it should be a bipartisan issue. The only people harmed by child influencer laws are the parents exploiting their kids.”
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