I have been an influencer for 8 years, and "The Dark side of Kidfluencing" Netflix show made me sick to my stomach

Let's remember this is an extreme case - my thoughts and what I want for my children

Bonjour,

When I started this Substack and My Little French Life, I knew I wanted this platform to be more about me sharing long form writing and opinion pieces as well as food and recipes. I find it hard and pretty impossible to share a true opinion or touch on a tricky subject on social. I know most people don’t read the full caption, spend 30 seconds on a post without reading the counter argument of the said caption, and then move on to the comments. Every nuance seems to be lost in translation, which I find utterly frustrating. So here are a few thoughts on my job, my kids involvements and the future.

Influencing isn’t new

Let’s start here. Influencing as a job has always existed. Lobbyists, journalists, politicians, salesman/saleswomen etc … their jobs are to influence people in doing something or buying something. They do it in the public space and the private space, and society seems to have totally accepted that it is a done thing, because they are paid to do so and it is their jobs. Now, an “Influencer” in the social media world can be pretty much anyone who has an audience. Nano, Macro, Mega, as long as people are here to be influenced.

After quitting my career in IT Consulting, following my success on the British TV show The Great British Bake Off, I decided to give “influencing” a go. I did not go on the show thinking that I would, as I loved my job and my life, but I was already running a little Blog - Manon’s Little Kitchen - and liked to share my recipes and holidays on Instagram to my 300 “friends”. I had gained 80k followers following the show, received some interest from agents, had always wanted my own business and saved 6 months of rent, so I thought, let’s do this!

Influencing isn’t for everyone, my manger always says that I would be living my life in the exact same way

if I wasn’t a content creator and he is totally right. Having grown in a farm in France, I have always cooked, had strong family values and loved being surrounded with people and hearing their stories. At school, I knew “everyone”, had a lot of friends, in high school I was always taking part in the dance shows and productions and at University, I was voted to be the Student Office President. Let’s say I was probably destined in doing something like this :)

I have been doing this job for 8 years, I cannot tell you how much I love it and how much I am grateful for it. I am one of the lucky one.

But I am an adult. I have had life experiences and life perspectives which has made me confortable with sharing my life online, with little consequences to my mental well being or changes in my personality.

Why I don’t think Kidfluencing should be legal

I do not understand how kids can be Influencers from the age of 9 years old or even younger (just like in “The Dark Side of Kidfluencing”) when you should be - as per guidelines - at least 13 years old to have a social media account. How has no one done anything yet to make this illegal?

If you haven’t watched that Netflix Docu serie, it is essentially about a mum (and you could say a group of parents) who used their children to create Youtube channels and videos, to earnt obscene amount of moneys from views and partnerships. On the show, the children tell you how they used to film from 7 am to 1 am - the law in the UK for modelling contracts is on 20 min at a time FYI - then add manipulation, harassement, sexual harassement on top, it is very extreme and disturbing.

It seems like the main kid on the show was very outgoing and enjoyed being a performer at first. As parents, we want the best for our children, and if they can earn some money to pay for their university now, why not! For me, I share some of my mum life and I do get opportunities to work for kids brands. So yes, for now, I have been sharing my children online and have them rarely featured in some of my paid content . I have always been open to conversations, and for the time being, I am comfortable with it. I will only share my children in their best self, I am very conscious of how often I take photos of them (as little and as quickly as possible) and I prefer to live in the moment. They get to enjoy amazing experiences and directly benefit from it. I am however reassessing the situation with my nearly 4 years old Fleur, who will start school soon. I don’t want it to impact her at school and since I haven’t grown up in the “public space” myself, I think it might be wise to keep her in stories (which disappears after 24h) and on posts, only when she has modelling contracts.

I guess to me, I have a different personal perspective on what you can call “child labour” (just to remind you, for me that “child labour” means filming my daughter and I cooking - which we do without being filmed everyday anyway). I grew up on a farm and we have always helped our mum and dad with labour. We were never paid for it and I never had a problem with it. Because I understood where my parents were coming from. I think it was also part of their education ( being both farmer’s son and daughter themselves) to teach us what hard work means and what supporting the family unit entitles. We always had everything we needed, my parents were always very generous with presents as kids, we went on holidays and as young adults, they paid for our student accommodations, cars, petrol, food ect. My kids participating in my video is of course very different and public.

That said, I really really don’t want my children to work as Kidfluencers. In my ideal little world, they will not have a public social account or do any sort of monetisation of their content (without ME or on MY platform) until they are at least 16 - the age I started to work outside of my parents farm and earned my own money. I really want to try my best to push them to do any other types of jobs, so they can learn from their experiences and then, if they really love sharing and/or enjoy creating purposeful contents and influence, then I’ll let them - at 16 :)

They are plenty of reasons of why I don’t want my kids to be Kidfluencers, for their well being, mental health stability, core values, all of the other reasons why I will try my best to shield them from watching Kidfluencer content. The same reasons why I do not understand how is it allowed! Even with “content shared with parental approval”. Maybe I have no idea of what’s coming as a parents, and also this is by no means a criticism to parents who let them kids do it - I know it is so much easier to say than to do! I want them to be kids and silly teenagers and act like no one else is watching. Learning to become an adult is hard, I can’t imagine what is like when hundreds, thousands or millions of people are watching you do so. We all make mistakes, especially as young adults, because this is how we learn.

What I know as an influencer,

so I can share with my kids when they grow up, is that influencing is a job. It is like a shop front window of your life. I share a fraction of my life online, mostly positive - which I am always anyway - so they will know it is just this. I do love it and I do feel I have a purpose, which is to encourage people to cook and fuel their body, just like I like to share my style, so my community reclaims their own and the same with parenting. But they will also know I didn’t get to do my dream job without hard work, dedication and everything in between. They will learn that comparison is the thieve of joy, that happiness is having what you have and that in real life human connections are the ones to cherish.

My kids have never watched Youtube (they are still only small I guess) but I will not let them watch it - you can find everything they need on TV platforms. They don’t have an iPad and I hope never will, and they have never watched anything on my phone or my husbands. My 4 years old has 30 min max of TV a day, always supervised and I try as much as possible to make her watch slow and old school comics or Disney. We also don’t use screens when we travel, it has worked for us so far. The goal is to continue and I hope they will both start secondary schools when phones are banished. You can say “I am part of the problem” but I hope I can help to change the narrative and show some truth.

Le mot de la fin

Thank you for reading this. I could write another few paragraphs on this, but instead I will recommend 2 books:

“Hold on to your kids” by Gabor Mate and Dr Gordon Neufeld

“The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” by Jonathan Haidt

Thank you for reading me as always, and I’d love to hear your perspective and thoughts in the comments. It always helps me to know about your experiences to help shaping my opinions and knowledge.

Bisous,

Manon xx