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About a year ago, my son started freaking out if he saw a Ferrari, a McLaren, or a Lamborghini. His sudden passion for cool cars might not seem strange, but at the time he was 7 years old and no one in the family talked about McLarens. How could he identify a $300,000 car at a glance? And why did his life goal of becoming a veterinarian/professional soccer player change to becoming a billionaire with a mansion and 10 pools? These weren’t the values we were trying to teach him! And then, one day, it hit me. YouTube was corrupting our son’s soul.
That might sound like an exaggeration, but have you watched YouTube with a kid? I’m not talking about something innocent and educational, like Ms. Rachel. I’m talking about shows like Hudson’s Playground (3.39 million subscribers) and its spinoff Hudson’s Playground Gaming (2.24 million), with hundreds of videos showing a little kid named Hudson and his dad riding tractors on their farm, or if that’s too wholesome, playing a video game called BeamNG.drive. (They also sell a line of merch—my second-grader doesn’t need a $16 “gaming mousepad.”) Then there is The Royalty Family (33.5 million), in which the Los Angeles–based Saleh family pulls pranks and revels in materialism, like flying first class to Dubai or staying in the world’s most expensive Airbnb. I mean, the name of that show pretty much says it all. I’m someone who loves a plush hotel robe, and I wouldn’t say no if I got offered a first-class plane ticket, but I couldn’t get through a full episode because the level of shallowness and phoniness repulsed me. My son, however, was rapt.
Once I realized why he was becoming a mini materialist, The Royalty Family and shows that similarly push kids to value fancy cars and luxury items became off-limits. But it wasn’t until I read Fortesa Latifi’s new book Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online, out this Tuesday, that I realized just how dark the world of online family vlogging can get.
“We are fascinated by how other families live,” Latifi writes in her book. As a journalist who has been covering influencer culture for several years, Latifi has observed and analyzed who knows how many posts and videos of families sharing their most intimate moments online. (I cannot imagine enduring her algorithm.) Childbirth, breastfeeding, sourdough-making while breastfeeding, pregnancy reveals, miscarriage confessionals, potty-training milestones, teary-eyed moments in which the parent—typically a blond white mom—talks about how thankful they are for their gaggle of perfect children and their farm. In the book, Latifi writes about the old-school mommy bloggers who got paid to share their most intimate moments and struggles via monetized blog posts. Their intensions weren’t evil. Most of them were simply parents looking to create flexible, stay-at-home work. The monetary success they experienced by writing real and relatable blog posts eventually morphed into our current crop of moms who get paid to post about their kids, because posts about kids, especially if they’re shocking, get clicks. The mommy bloggers, Latifi writes, “opened a door that can’t be shut.”
I never got sucked into the picture-perfect worlds of @Ballerinafarm creator Hannah Neeleman or Karissa Collins, both of whom Latifi writes about in her book. These devout, beautiful women who bear so many children they have to cram them all into the video frame are the epitome of the MAGA dream girl, the type of women Donald Trump was imagining when he babbled about creating a National Medal of Motherhood. As I read Latifi’s book, I’d stop to scroll through some of these women’s posts. Instead of coveting what they had, I laughed out loud. Neeleman just gave birth to her ninth child in March, and a few weeks later she was back to harvesting cabbage. The woman makes homemade hand-rolled sourdough tortillas, for crying out loud. Maybe that sounds aspirational to you, but I’d rather get a massage. And I only have one kid.
“Mom influencers, mostly, make me feel like shit,” Latifi writes. “I reach for them because of the astounding loneliness of American motherhood, but the image they reflect back to me only makes me feel worse.”
The online tradwives and mom influencers are making a choice to post about their lives, but many of the kids are not. The negative reaction I had to the shows my son was watching was reinforced while reading Latifi’s book. There are very few states with laws protecting child influencers, and the stories of some of these families prove to be deeply disconcerting. Latifi writes about one mom, Aubree Jones, who posted an Instagram video to her 1 million followers about making a “period kit” for her preteen daughter. The video was sponsored by U by Kotex (I would have murdered my mom in cold blood). Another, which rattled even Latifi, who has scrolled through thousands of disconcerting posts, involved parents who filmed a medical emergency, when their infant was unresponsive.
That’s not to say I am doing what Dr. Michel Walrave, a professor at University of Antwerp who Latifi interviews, calls “mindful sharenting.” That means posting only photos of your kids from the back or using emojis to block their faces. I post photos and videos of my kid breakdancing or playing soccer because, to me at least, he’s adorable. Still, he’s 8 years old. When he was in the throes of watching YouTube, he would yell, “Subscribe to my channel!” if I filmed a private happy birthday message to send to one of his cousins. There was no channel to subscribe to, but believe me, he begged for one. We’re keeping him away from platforms like Instagram and TikTok for as long as possible. As countries like Australia pass laws to keep kids off social media, and a recent landmark court case found Meta and YouTube negligent in social media safety for adolescents, I’m even more resolved to keep my son off their platforms.
It might seem unfathomable to post about your child’s period or their first kiss, but Latifi, ever the measured journalist, is admirably nonjudgmental about some of the parents, especially single moms, who make money by sharing their kids’ every move and milestone. “And what is a single stay-at-home mom of eight supposed to do for work?” she writes of the American mothers who might otherwise be working at a fast-food chain, spending hours away from their kids. Later, she adds, “If rage could buy me a house, I would bait people too.”
Hopefully The Royalty Family parents and Hudson’s dad are saving up for college for the kids, or putting money away in savings for them. MrBeast, my son is always quick to inform me, gives “lots” of his billion-dollar fortune to charity. Even so, I don’t want my son exposed to what one family vlogger, quoted by Latifi, calls “a narcissism factory.” That vlogger, who was making over a million dollars a year, used to bribe their kids with money to appear happy and upbeat in videos. And they’re not the only ones.
After we banned certain shows, I slept better knowing my son wasn’t being corrupted by YouTube videos where parents and kids talk about shopping and private jets and McLarens for hours on end, selling everything from branded hoodies to McDonald’s to Bugatti scooters in the process. I was OK with the occasional prank show where some dudes would rig a giant waterslide from their second-floor window out into the yard. The shows were vapid, sure, but at least they weren’t teaching my kid to worship mansions and money.
One day over the December holiday break, though, a miracle happened. My son turned off YouTube completely and switched back to innocent shows like Bluey and Hilda, shows that make him giggle until tears stream down his face. He somehow found and binged the old Ariana Grande/Jennette McCurdy sitcom Sam & Kat. (He’s a little too young for me to inform him about McCurdy’s book I’m Glad My Mom Died or the behind-the-scenes toxicity of that show.) I was just glad he was watching a comedy. Was he maturing? Did his soul suddenly compute that those YouTube shows were bad for his brain? I was afraid to even say the words YouTube for a while in case it reminded him of its existence.
These shows and aspirational Instagram and TikTok accounts aren’t disappearing anytime soon. And, as Latifi writes, if a single mom in America can support her kids via branded content that telegraphs every aspect of their lives, that’s her choice. Our choice is whether we ignore it, or subscribe.
