As "Kidfluencers" become more common, Illinois passes law to require compensation

(NATIONAL) Scroll any social media platform and it’s not uncommon to see a parent featuring their child in a reel or video and some of that content even going viral or earning money.

Kids featured in social media videos are sometimes referred to as “kidfluencers” and they are growing in numbers.

According to Forbes, two children were in the top 10 for earnings through YouTube videos in 2021.  

With the rise of child influencers comes questions about compensation and child labor. 

Illinois recently became the first U.S. state to require compensation for child influencers. 

“The rise of social media has given children new opportunities to earn a profit,” said Illinois State Senator David Koehler. “Many parents have taken this opportunity to pocket the money, while making their children continue to work in these digital environments.”

Illinois Senate Bill 1782 was signed into law on August 11th and goes into effect on July 1, 2024. 

The new law requires compensation for children under 16 who are featured vloggers in social media content of their parents or caregivers that is monetized. 

If a child under 16 is in at least 30 percent of a monetized video for their parent or caregiver, money must be set aside in a trust account for that child. 

The idea to protect child influencers came from Shreya Nallamothu, a teen in Koehler’s district. 

“When scrolling on social media, I always saw young children and families, called family vlog channels, posting videos online,” said Nallamothu. “After finding that users could make money off of platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, I learned that, often, these kids are made to participate in videos without any guarantee of the income generated from the content.” 

The law does not apply to child vloggers who are making their own content. 

Despite the lack of protections for child social media influencers, many Americans think they should be compensated. 

In 2022, YouGov conducted a poll where 55% of respondents said child influencers should be protected under child labor laws. 

According to FiveThirtyEight, one of the reasons that child influencers have not received protection is because social media monetization hasn’t been heavily regulated. 

Additionally, while there is public support for regulating kid influencers, Kimberly Rauscher, a professor of Public and Population Health at Boise State University told FiveThirtyEight that there is a lack of research on how being a “kidfluencer” affects children, which Rauscher believes is one of the reasons protections for these children has not been top of mind for politicians. 

While Illinois is the first state to pass a bill with protections for child influencers, legislators in Washington State have also discussed the matter, but no legislation has passed. 

VNN will continue to follow this topic and look into if more states will follow suit with protections for children featured on monetized social media.