Although we still have a ways to go, the national conversation around consent has never been more robust than it is now. Thanks, in part, to the #MeToo movement, people are starting to consider the nuances of consent beyond the old adage of "No means no." And these days, the conversation goes beyond sexual relationships. It includes children.
Not only are parents teaching their children to exercise body autonomy, but they're also considering the ramifications of posting images of children online who either haven't given their permission or can't do so.
Kodye Elyse's video of her daughter went viral unintentionally.
Elyse, a mom, had to grapple with that reality during the pandemic. During those first few months of lockdown, she was posting what she considered “regular mom content,” according to NBC News.
The tattoo artist had few followers and her videos weren’t getting that many views. So she assumed it “wasn’t a big deal” to post content showing her family’s day-to-day lives, including ones with her daughter dancing around the house.
One video of her daughter dancing was viewed 6 million times within hours, and Elyse's following grew to 100K.
The video in question featured her and her then-5-year-old daughter. In a quick edit, the little girl seemed to transform into her mother. When that video went viral, Elyse knew that she had to take her children offline.
What was particularly disturbing were the comments Elyse’s new following left about her daughter.
The comments under the video disturbed Elyse.
“I remember that one of the top comments on it was ‘Wait, no, I liked the first one better,’” Elyse said, according to NBC News. “I made the choice that day. I removed every video of them. I wiped them from the internet. … I knew she [my daughter] didn’t have a say that her face was being shown to that many people.”
Now Elyse, along with other content creators, wants to encourage influencers to think more critically about featuring their children on social media.
The rationale is that children can’t consent to having their images and likenesses plastered all over the internet, and may not have the desire to be public figures along with their parents. In addition, documenting a child’s life where the viewership is “limitless” can pose a safety concern.
Increased presence on social media as a child may lead to identity issues later in life, some experts believe.
Sarah Adams, creator of the TikTok account Mom Uncharted, which explores issues of social media ethics regarding children specifically, is clear that this trend is an issue. Adams said children can’t conceptualize the idea of the internet and the notion that their images will live on various platforms forever.
Lindsey Cooley, a clinical child psychologist, said the children of influencer parents can be something like unwilling child stars. Cooley says these children can be “conditioned to know that when the phone is out, they should be behaving a certain way.” And if a family relies on content featuring children for financial stability, children might not have a choice in whether they participate.
“I think what we’re going to see is a lot of fracturing of identity on some level where kids will be even more disjointed when it comes to who they are,” Cooley told NBC News. It’s evidently already starting to show up in children who appeared online during the early 2000s and 2010s.
A TikToker who was featured extensively on their mother's social media pages says children are not content.
Cam, a TikToker who uses they/them pronouns, was prominently featured on their mother’s social media pages from the time they were in second grade. Today, Cam struggles with the idea of being watched.
“I was able to understand social media more as I got older, and that’s when I got really, really bad paranoia about who’s watching me and who’s looking at me,” they told NBC News.
Parents and experts are calling for increased regulations regarding children online.
Currently, no laws regulate the presence of children online or in advertisements. Adams argued that needs to change.
“The problem I have with the family vlogging community are those individuals who are turning their kids into content, meaning the kid is the sole focus of the account or the account would not be successful without regular use of the child,” Adams told NBC News.
“Those accounts are very different from influencers who share a picture from their vacation or share a photo at Christmas.”
