Influencer marketing has become one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. As social media reaches younger generations, children have become increasingly involved in partnering with brands to market goods and services that appeal to kids.

There are thousands of kid influencers, many of whom earn hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year. Although they may not be well known to adults, “kidfluencers” such as Ryan Kaji, Elle McBroom, Mari Copeny, Hayley LeBlanc, Gavin Duh, Priah Ferguson, Tydus Talbott, and Coco Quinn have garnered fame and fortune through social media and influencer marketing.

Although federal law defines a “child” as someone under the age of 18, many social media platforms allow children over the age of 13 to run their own accounts. This divergence has created a range of issues regarding parental involvement, management and control of their child’s social media platforms.

Machelle Hobson, a parent of seven children, created a YouTube series starring her children called “Fantastic Adventures,” where the children went on a variety of adventures for the world to see. The series had nearly 800,000 subscribers, attracted numerous brand partnerships and garnered more than 250 million views. The success of the show was eclipsed by the horrific conditions in which the children labored, and Hobson was eventually arrested on a litany of charges, including child abuse, neglect and unlawful imprisonment.

The case, together with many other examples of physical, emotional and financial abuse, have prompted states to implement laws specifically aimed at protecting child influencers. Illinois’ new law, which amends the state’s Child Labor Law, is aimed at protecting minors under the age of 16 from financial abuse stemming from their parents’ management of their social media channels and accounts. The law specifically targets family vlogging, such as that run by Hobson, to ensure that children are not being financially exploited by their parents.

The law also states that adults using the “likeness, name, or photograph” of a minor must set aside part of the earnings received, depending on the minor’s involvement in the content. The earnings must be placed in a trust account, which would be made available to the minor upon the child’s turning 18 years of age. Furthermore, records documenting the minor’s engagement and involvement in the content must also be kept. 

The Illinois law emanates from a trend toward “sharenting,” in which parents share content of their children on social media through photos or videos. Sometimes, children have a digital footprint before they are even born due to parents’ sharing content from their prenatal ultrasounds. This practice has created issues surrounding the rights of privacy, publicity and financial compensation of minors.

Parents, often unwilling to ask their children for consent, are becoming more inclined to share their children’s lives on social media by posting a family picture on a Facebook account or having a viral family vlogging channel. At the federal level, there is a gap in protection for children, as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) authorizes parents to have ultimate authority regarding the sharing of content of their child.

The protections provided by the new Illinois law are similar to those provided to child actors in the film and television industries. The Coogan Act in California, as well as similar laws in New York, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, protect the earnings of a child performer through the use of a trust account.

The California law was adopted in 1939 following a high-profile lawsuit by child star Jackie Coogan, alleging his mother and her husband had taken all of his earnings by the time he reached adulthood. It mandates that 15 percent of a child performer’s earnings must remain in a trust until they reach adulthood.  

Although Illinois is the first state to address abuse surrounding kidfluencers, other states will undoubtedly follow suit in light of the meteoric rise of the practice. For example, the state of Washington recently introduced HB 1627, which—similar to the law in Illinois—is designed to prevent the financial abuse of children featured on social media channels by creating a compensation plan based on the number of views the video receives and the amount of time the child is featured in the content.  The bill also addresses and calculates compensation when more than one minor child is featured in a video.

Similarly, in Maryland, state Delegate Jazz Lewis introduced House Bill 645 to compensate minors appearing in social media video content. State Sen. Clarence Lam cross-filed the same bill in the Senate. The bill mandates the compensation process for a child in a vlogger’s video content, using the same metrics and trust account process as the Illinois law and Washington bill.  It also establishes the same compensation plan for when more than one child is featured in a video.

In California, state Sen. Steve Padilla introduced California State Senate Bill 764 in February, which requires content creators who feature minors in at least 30 percent of their content to set aside a proportionate percentage of their earnings in trust for the minors to access when they reach adulthood.

Influencer marketing is a complicated and nuanced business. Finding influencers who reflect the values of the brand and resonate with the consuming public is an art unto itself. Crafting and executing compelling campaigns is also very challenging. Drafting and negotiating the attendant agreements with the influencers while ensuring compliance with the panoply of laws, rules, and regulations is time-consuming, expensive, and requires experienced legal counsel.

When you add kidfluencers to the equation, the process becomes even more difficult. Therefore, brands, agencies and parents are well-advised to stay informed about the relevant regulations in their respective jurisdictions to ensure compliance with this growing list of laws.