Family vloggers have been a Youtube staple for as long as the site has been popular, but it’s only in recent years that the harmful nature of these channels has really come to the attention of viewers. The rise in social media platforms like TikTok has allowed people to gain fame overnight, and with it, a whole new generation of content has arisen. Disturbingly, a large number of parents seem perfectly willing to use their children to gain their five minutes of stardom.
TikTok is notoriously bad when it comes to minor safety. With the minimum sign-up age being easy to bypass and videos being pushed onto feeds randomly - it’s easy to see how a seemingly innocent video could fall into the hands of someone it shouldn’t. Parents posting videos of their toddlers have often been shocked to find that they gain thousands of ‘saves’ with no way of knowing who now has access to that video or where they have shared it. On top of this, considering how simple it is to bypass TikTok’s community guidelines when it comes to content surrounding mental health it’s disturbing to think how easy it would be for a predator to locate a vulnerable target, and this is already something that there are documented cases of.
One of Youtube’s most prominent family channels, the Saccone Joly’s, has frequently come under fire for just how much of their children’s lives have been shared on the internet. Critics have pointed out that their children were unable to consent to their private lives being used for content and the arguably exploitative nature of the parents earning money by using their children. Furthermore, by publishing a child online, they are immediately opened up to a world of hate comments and trolling that no amount of screen time restrictions can shield them from. Even if the videos are later deleted, there is no way to prevent re-uploads and discussion forums online will always have opinions to share, often ones that aren’t kind.
Due to the explosion in popularity of this kind of content being so recent (it gained widespread attention in the 2010s), it’s simply impossible to know what the long-term mental health effects are of being judged by strangers at such a formative age. This kind of content is unfortunately here to stay, but it’s important to call into question just how ethical it really is.