Abstract
Child social media influencers, colloquially known as “kidfluencers,” have skyrocketed to fame alongside the growth of social media. However, traditional child labor laws do not consider online influencing “work” or these kids to be “child performers.” Thus, these children do not receive any form of legal protection for their presence online, leaving them open to exploitation and severe harms. This Note explores the lack of protection provided to kidfluencers, ultimately proposing a new federal labor law to expand child actor protections to kidfluencers. Part I of this Note provides a brief history of the landscape by reviewing landmark Supreme Court cases on the rights of the child, detailing the introduction of child labor laws and child actor protections, and surveying the meteoric rise of social media and “family vlogging” in the field of child labor. Part II explores the potential harms that kidfluencers could face due to the lack of regulation in the “family vlogging” field. Part III proposes a reform for the current legal schema to protect child influencers, ultimately culminating in a new federal labor law expanding current protections to protect child actors and introducing a privacy aspect to preserve children’s right to consent.
Recommended Citation
Caroline Waldo,
Don’t Forget to Like, Follow, and Regulate: An Argument for the Expansion of Protections for Child Social Media Influencers,
57
U. Mich. J. L. Reform
537
(2024).
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr/vol57/iss2/7