Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online, by Fortesa Latifi. Gallery Books, 288 pp.
Last Halloween, a clever costume “won the Internet,” as the saying goes. Kate Snyder of Brooklyn posted a picture of herself in a tiny smocked dress, knee-high socks, and a white cardboard heart surrounding her white-painted face. Her caption reads “[I’m] the toddler of a celebrity mom who wants to protect my identity but she also want[s] to post my outfits.”
Snyder’s post received thousands of likes on Instagram and even made its way over to a Reddit snark page (more on what that is later). The costume poked fun at the concept of “mindful sharenting,” one of many quickly-emerging social media trends examined by journalist Fortesa Latifi in her new book Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online. In Like, Follow, Subscribe, Latifi interviews parent and child influencers to pull back the curtain on how the industry uses parasocial relationships to sell everything from dining tables to diaper cream, and how growing up in a home that’s essentially a 24/7 reality television set negatively impacts a child. Latifi cites books like Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture by Sara Petersen and zeroes in on the effects on child influencers specifically.
Social media is a huge part of how contemporary Americans shop, work, and play. It’s also a huge part of how they parent—both what they share and consume. “Mindful sharenting—which can include photographing a child from the back or putting an emoji over their faces—can be a way to navigate the perceived risks of sharing your child online while still showcasing your experience of parenthood,” a communication studies expert tells Latifi in the book. “Mindful sharenting” is an approach that’s trickled down from influencers like Brooklyn McKnight (who has millions of Instagram followers and is herself a former child influencer) to normal parents who say they value privacy for their children.
But children’s online privacy encompasses much more than just the decision to show their faces on parents’ social media accounts. Latifi, herself a mother, traces the history of blogging and vlogging about family life from text to image to video. At each step, the financial incentives grew, and so did the invasiveness. “The amount of money in the mom influencer and family vlogging world is almost unbelievable,” Latifi writes. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s more than that. According to Goldman Sachs research, the creator economy is expected to reach $500 trillion by 2027, and the highest echelons of mom influencers and family vloggers make hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year.”
That money—much of which goes to Big Tech companies’ bottom lines—is life-changing for families, but it also turns them into “something more resembling a business arrangement,” in Latifi’s words. Family influencing encompasses a spectrum of experiences. Latifi interviews child influencers who say they love what they do; after all, “they’re living the dreams of the 86 percent of young Americans who want to be influencers,” she writes. She also interviews and writes about children who have been hurt, betrayed, and even abused by parents chasing fortune and fame, the most extreme example being momfluencer Ruby Franke, who is in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated child abuse.
Latifi talks to YouTuber and mom of eight Julie Jeppson, who lets her in on a dirty little secret of the business: content with sick or injured kids performs the best. It’s the content “that you’re not supposed to post,” in Jeppson’s words.
“People would be like, ‘Oh my gosh, your kids are always sick, and I swear that she’s doing this on purpose and blah, blah, blah.’ They can think what they want,” she tells Latifi. “Humans are curious, and they want to know what is happening and why is this kid in the hospital? So they click on it.”
Latifi is skeptical but sympathetic toward her subjects. She acknowledges the constraints of raising a family (especially as a single mom, as Jeppson identifies herself) under late-stage capitalism. But she also exposes the lies that influencer parents tell themselves and others. Latifi talks to Jeppson about a video of her daughter India crying because of Father’s Day songs at a sacrament meeting (the Jeppsons are Mormon). Jeppson and her husband were separated at the time, and India needed to step away to process her emotions. Jeppson says she got consent from India, who understands that the family’s videos can help other children going through similar situations.
Latifi isn’t buying it. “I’ve read comments on Jeppson’s videos that thank her for her unpolished content and describe how it’s helped other people get through their own difficulties. I just don’t understand how that is more important than allowing India to experience such an emotional moment privately,” she writes. “Sure, it might help other kids who are missing their dads, but in my mind, other kids aren’t Jeppson’s concern. India is.”
Latifi has a similar conversation with a family vlogger who chooses to be identified only as “Sam” in order to protect his or her identity. “Any parent influencer is constantly fighting feelings of guilt, feelings of questioning, second-guessing yourself. But you learn to bury it and silence it with justifications,” Sam tells her.
Sam is not alone. Latifi dedicates an entire chapter of Like, Follow, Subscribe, titled “From Content to Consent: The Parents Who Changed Their Minds,” to parents who built huge followings thanks in part to their young children, then reversed course. Aspyn Ovard, who transitioned from teenfluencer to momfluencer, stopped posting her children’s faces in 2023 to protect the children’s privacy.
“Aspyn explains [in a 2024 video] that she’s gone back to delete old content featuring her kids, but when it comes to sponsored content, she hasn’t been able to, because featured in some of the contracts is the understanding that the content will live on her platform indefinitely,” Latifi writes. She points out that many influencers build lucrative platforms using their kids then choose to stop posting their children once they’ve already inked brand deals—in other words, those influencers are still benefiting from the choice to post their children.
Family influencing is uncharted territory, and a couple of states have passed legislation around it. Such regulations on child influencers can be complicated and quickly outflanked by the rate of technological change, so Latifi is circumspect. “The exact nature of family influencing is what makes it so difficult to legislate…. The labor of a child influencer is so different than that of child actors, to whom they are often compared,” she writes.
Like, Follow, Subscribe poses many thought-provoking questions about parental rights as the conservative parental rights movement grows. Currently, the conservative parental rights movement is focused on things like parents’ ability to say no to vaccine schedules pushed by pediatricians or sexually graphic books assigned by public school teachers. But how should conservatives respond to children being exploited online by their parents and corporations when appealing to “parental rights” plays right into Big Tech’s hands?
Latifi is right that parents know best, until they don’t. In an especially disturbing chapter, she talks to a mom who rationalizes posting videos of her young daughters’ dance routines even though she knows such content appeals to pedophiles. Some of Latifi’s commentary—her priors include Teen Vogue and Rolling Stone—is sure to rankle readers on the right. She cites a researcher who includes homeschooling and/or frequent relocating as one of eight potential harms to child influencers. She ponders the tradwife-versus-girlboss dichotomy and American feminism. “As I’m writing this, Donald Trump is president for the second time, and the experience of American motherhood has never been more threatened,” she writes, referring to the patchwork of post-Roe abortion laws. But such a claim does a disservice to Latifi’s important work on child safety that is sure to be a huge issue long after Trump leaves office. Our collectively commodified online existence is threatening American motherhood and many, many other aspects of American life, and this issue won’t leave office in 2029.
Should children have a right to online privacy from birth, or should parents have the right to determine a child’s online profile when he or she is young? These are questions that seem black-and-white but turn much grayer as you look more closely. At a minimum, the evidence in Like, Follow, Subscribe should push conservatives to think through what they really mean when they discuss parental rights. There’s no perfect solution to preserve all parents’ autonomy and protect every child from every potential harm. Which compromises are conservatives willing to make? What outcomes are they willing to accept?
As for the abovementioned snark pages—this may be some of the most interesting digging that Latifi does in the book, because it involves not influencers and wannabe celebrities but everyday people. Look up any major influencer’s name plus the word “snark,” and there’s probably a page dedicated to tearing him or her apart on Reddit. A subreddit dedicated to Aspyn Ovard snark has more than 30,000 weekly visitors. Latifi writes,
There tends to be this idealized vision of snarking, where, [digital culture expert Jess] Rauchberg explains, ‘We’re not gossiping, we’re not shit-talking, but we are doing a secret third thing.’ One of the ways snarkers define their role is by instituting rules around their snark… This is what separates snarkers from haters – snarkers have embarked on what they see as a moral crusade. When you read through snark pages, the posters are adamant that they’re not just hating – they’re raising awareness about whatever issue they think the influencer they’re talking shit about exemplifies.
The most interesting revelation? Many “snarkers” are former fans who have soured on the influencers they once idolized. They still consume, analyze, and share the influencers’ content, just with a different purpose. But they’re absorbing it and being affected by it just the same.
Social media is a digital double-edged sword. It creates connections, spreads ideas, and enforces accountability. But all Americans, whether they’re parents or not, need to remember that if something’s free, then they’re the product. Your data, your time, your purchasing power—the more time you’re on social media, the more multinational corporations benefit. Instead of relying on momfluencers to tell us how to parent and what to buy, ask a friend or family member for help, no affiliate link or promo code needed.
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