Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online

by Fortesa Latifi

A searing investigation into the child influencer industry and the perils of childhood internet fame, Like, Follow, Subscribe is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the costs of internet fame, and the ethics of online content.

What is it like to grow up with a camera in your face 24/7? To have your childhood moments sold as “content” to millions online? What happens when someone who works in a largely unregulated multi-billion-dollar industry sells away their childhood and has no financial safety net as an adult? What does it feel like to have your private moments—your medical diagnoses, your first period, your first break up, your tantrums, potty-training, and breastfeeding-weaning—broadcast to an audience of millions? Like, Follow, Subscribe shines a spotlight on the deeply troubling world of the child influencer industry.

Journalist Fortesa Latifi dives into the lives of children whose parents mine their everyday activities for monetizable content, exposing issues like privacy violations, financial abuse, and the absence of child labor protections. Through expert interviews with psychologists, labor scientists, and even former child influencers and family vloggers, she uncovers the pressures, trauma, and consequences for children thrust into the spotlight.

This timely and eye-opening book doesn’t just reveal the harm of toxic social media it also provides a roadmap to better regulating influencer families, safeguarding children, and questioning the role of audiences in perpetuating these cycles of exploitation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Parenting, Sociology, Technology, Psychology, Social Media

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2026

Reviews

[Lola Em]

A breezy and ultimately frustrating read by an author who refuses to take any kind of stances or draw any conclusions. Kidfluencing is bad! Except when it's not! Kids are being viewed by pedophiles online in content that their parents post! But they make so much money! But some of the kids don't like it! But having other moms to look up to makes me feel better, so who can say if it's bad or not? Girl, grow a backbone and pick a perspective.

[Claire Rehfuss]

I came to this book with a somewhat unusual perspective. I've been an influencer for five years (two full-time and three while also working a traditional job). Because of that, very little in this book surprised me. I already knew how much money exists in this industry and what is required to earn it.

I mean the first time I met with an influencer agency, they immediately asked when my boyfriend and I planned to get married and have kids. They showed us what family influencers were making from sponsorships and even simple story posts - $50k was the number i was told for a set of stories from the Luyendyk’s. They said if we wanted to be serious about influencing milestones have to move fast. I think about that whenever an influencer couple gets engaged and wedding content starts being churned out.

Overall, I found the book fascinating and thought provoking. But I kept waiting for a deeper examination of who ultimately benefits from this system. The author discusses parents, social pressures, and social media platforms, but she stops short of fully interrogating the agencies, brands, and broader capitalist forces driving the industry. That omission felt notable to me.

If you also rubberneck influencers or participate in snark pages, you'll probably enjoy the book. If you're on the fence, I'd suggest reading the author's Teen Vogue articles first. But yeah go ahead and unsubscribe from any child influencers you follow.

[Booksblabbering || Cait❣️]

I pressed Like, Follow, Subscribe to this author after reading this.
I couldn’t look away.

What happens when parents turn their children's daily lives, private moments, and milestones into monetised online content for millions of viewers? Brand deals? A parasocial relationship between viewers and vlogger? Lawsuits? Trauma? Pedophilia?

Whilst offering nothing I didn’t already know, I appreciated how well the information was collected. Personal, relatable (to the extent that I’m not a mother) narration and asides with facts from experts and research studies, and case studies of well-known influencer families created a darkly fascinating read. 

One thing that I was less aware of was the amount of money made AND the amount of family influencers there are. Is this where a chunk of our money is disappearing to? 

It is unsurprising that there are few, if no, laws protecting children and also child labour. Having a camera shoved in your face and ‘performing’ for almost every single minute of your early life must be exhausting and completely require your brain. 

It was interesting (and again, unsurprising) that many influencers justified what they were doing. 

I appreciated that the author also recognised the incentivising factors for mothers to buy into this. Influencers and viewers alike. To feel less alone. To be paid for work that normally goes unseen and unrecognised by society as it is ‘expected’ by women and mothers. 

Overall, if you have any prior knowledge (or are basically just online), I don’t think you’ll learn anything that will totally shock you, but it is still well-worth the read (or listen as the audiobook is narrated well by the author).  

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[Taylor Nelson]

I want this topic to be covered by a better author

[Hannah (hngisreading)]

Really nuanced & thorough while maintaining empathy for those who post & watch family influencer content.

This definitely has me rethinking my own relationship with social media.

[Ashten Gentry]

I've never written a review on goodreads before, but I feel very conflicted about this book and thought this would be a good forum to share my thoughts.

Overall, I thought this book had a lot of interesting insights into the world of family vlogging. I am not a person who regularly interacts with family vlogging content, but other than hearing about certain things in passing. I appreciate that this author doesn't attempt to make any sweeping generalizations or conclusions about the family vlogging industry, and seems to have a lot of empathy towards both sides of the argument.

However, I do feel like the author has a pretty blunt and un-nuanced dismissal of other societal functions that contribute to the industry of family vlogging that I feel are a major shortcomings of this book. In the second to last chapter the author states:

"I understand what she means; parents wouldn’t be making their kids into influencers if they weren’t incentivized to do so. But I don’t believe that the ultimate responsibility lies with tech companies. It’s a parent’s job to protect their child. Tech companies are, after all, companies—they exist to make money, not protect children. That’s what I find so confusing about the insistence that tech companies like Meta, Google, and Bytedance take steps to protect child influencers. Why would they? Child influencers make profit hand over fist for these corporations. It’s not in their interest to institute protections. In my view, the job of protection lies with parents, though of course not every parent can be trusted equally."

I have to say I was pretty disappointed by this take and the fact that so little was said on this point. I would first like to clarify in my argument that I am not attempting to sympathize with the family vlogging industry, and do believe that ultimately the decisions do lie with parents about starting family vlogging content. This book makes many great points about how children are unable to provide informed consent to be a part of family vlogging content, due to inherent power dynamics and the fact that they are children and lack the capabilities to fully understand repercussions of participating in these activities. But I would argue that a similar point could be made about the parents who make decisions to participate in this system. It's easy to look down on others who make "morally bankrupt" financial decisions from the place of someone who lives comfortably and doesn't struggle to feed and house their family. Can a parent who is struggling to survive truly provide informed consent to subjecting their children to this?

I feel like the singular focus on the responsibility of the parents results in a book that offers no real solution to these problems and acts more as a look into the world of family vlogging. I also think it allows tech companies and social media platforms and government agencies to get off with a slap on the wrist, when in reality I believe that a majority of family vloggers wouldn't exist without the financial incentive that these institutions continue to create. I would be interested to see statistics about the income of family vloggers before they started social media, in order to better assess why someone would start a platform that they know would potentially be harmful to their children.

[Shelby]

Every single parent that puts their child on a public platform in order to make money - congrats, you are your child’s pimp and deserve to be in jail for child endangerment and creation of CSAM :) no I will not elaborate or allow for nuance. thanks!

also I think the author is FAR TOO generous with the parents who are involved in this. as if we don’t ALL have to work jobs that suck because…we live in a capitalist society. so like yes you choosing to film yourself and post online is…your choice? the same way that going to a job and clocking in to make money is also your choice. why are these parents given more grace?
they are making STUPID FUCKING MONEY and I guess are somehow able to justify pimping their child out for that money. where is the gun to the parents heads that’s forcing them to film and exploit their children instead of going and getting a regular job?? I’ll wait…

I, a complete stranger, should not care more about the safety of your child than you do. and yet, it seems I do. as a victim of CSA I can’t help but weep in frustration for these children who were unfortunate enough to be born to these parasitic families, I genuinely hope you are able to grow up normally or at the very least get the opportunity to rock your parents shit one good time. whichever is more healing for you.

(complete side note. the fact that she spoke to that absolute low life worm Kevin Franke after that passive abuser allowed his sickening wife to do what she did I had to question the author a bit. yes I know he wasn’t charged with anything but knowing and allowing abuse to happen to your children means you are complicit)

[Grace Stafford]

By far one of the best pieces of journalism I have read about influencers and the internet era. Even if influencer families aren't on your radar, this breaks down the influencer industry and is valuable reading for everyone. Like the author, I started this book incredibly against child influencers and the families that put them in the situations, and while I still am, I am so much more aware of why these families continue the exploitation of their children. Also really didn't realize just how impossible the child protection laws in a few states are to administer!

[Jillian B]

This is a thoroughly researched examination of the child influencer industry. The author spoke to a LOT of influencer parents, some anonymized so they could speak candidly.

While I am definitely not in favour of children becoming public figures (and the author doesn’t seem to be either), I appreciated the level of nuance in this book. The author considers factors like the reality that the older children and teens in some of these families actually like being in the spotlight. And she acknowledges the complexity of the economic factors at play. The capacity to get rich off your children can absolutely lead to exploitation, but it can also open doors. If you’re the young, uneducated single mother of several children, what would actually be worse for them: growing up well-off but in the spotlight, or growing up in poverty with a mother who’s working three jobs and never home? There really aren’t easy answers.

I fear I’m making this book sound like it is pro-family-blogging, which it really isn’t. There are some harrowing stories in it. Still, the nuance is what I found most fascinating. This book isn’t a hit piece, but rather an exploration of the way this industry has become a cultural force, and the ethical dilemmas that creates.

[Mary]

As someone who has never watched a family vlog, isn’t in to momtok, and has made all of 2 TikTok’s in my life (both about zoning and planning), I have no idea why I read this other than to say I am fascinated by the internet. Also I spent a good chunk of my career reporting on reality television and there are a lot of parallels and cross-overs. This book was a quick read, had some excellent sections (Mormon chapter, snark communities, teen momtok, history and the examination of capitalism) but for all the details, it strangely felt pretty broad strokes and surface. Maybe she should’ve narrowed in more deeply on a few families? I really can’t explain why it didn’t feel very thorough?

I loved the history of the family vlog from the mommy blogs of yore (my era) to today, and the many iterations family vlogging takes from the clearly exploitative and gross, to the families who seem well-adjusted. I would’ve preferred a deeper, more thorough examination into some of these top creators. Or a day in the life of filming. For instance the story of the TikTok star whose child drowned, Latifi does not provide anything beyond the basic news and she uses it as an example of viewers’ parasocial relationships with creators. I’d never heard of 90% of the influencers featured, so I looked all of them up and did poke around the snark reddits too. That drowning was a case of clear criminal negligence on the part of the parents! Yet the author paints it as simply a tragic accident and breezily moves on to the next creator.

It’s almost as if she was afraid to upset some of these “creators” or afraid to go too deep, or maybe she just lost interest? They all seem pretty boring and redundant. Seriously - the content is so similar and empty?! Why is this interesting to millions?!?!?

In summation, I feel the book needed more narrow scope, some examination of incidents where kids have tried to stop their parents or refused to participate, and for all the talk about money — what happens when the money stops? She only features one family where this is explored. Again — left me wanting more.

Lastly I absolutely, 100% believe tech companies bear some responsibility and should be held liable for creating internal policies to limit child exploitation and labor. The author does not. That’s unfathomable to me.

[Rachel]

There were some good bits but the book was pretty clunky and repetitive. Each chapter felt disconnected from the one before it. It was as if she wrote them separately and with great time between them and didn’t bother to go back and see if she was repeating the same information about the same people again.

Even within the same chapter(s) there is a lot of repetition. She explains the acronym GOMI at least three times in a single short chapter about snark. She refers to influencer Lottie as one she talked about earlier and she did—two pages before (and many other times in the book with varying levels of detail). Why wasn’t the content about Lottie all together in that same themed chapter? Why split it up by a page or two?

Did she think people weren’t going to read the whole book?

tl;dr

It felt poorly edited and at times, that the author was unfamiliar with her own work. Which is odd because she did seem to talk to a lot of people and do a lot of research. I truly do wonder if some of the chapters were written months apart and she never read the completed book as a whole before submitting it.

[Kelsey Weekman]

an earth-shattering look into one of the most fascinating and heartbreaking moral dilemmas of our time - parent and family influencers. written with extreme empathy and care with a bombshell revelation on nearly every page, i thought this was one of the best books about the internet era i’ve ever read, even as an internet culture reporter. bravo, fortesa!!

[Tessa]

A good topic completely derailed by the author's poor writing and continual commentary on her own parenting choices.

[Kate]

Really challenging subject to tackle. This is not approached with the clinicism of, for example, the NYT articles on pedophiles engaging with child influencer content- this is not super heavily crunching any numbers or performing wide scale analysis of trends. Latifi takes an author-centered narrative nonfiction approach which felt both useful and limiting at times.

Useful: she sees the parents she interacts with as people. She speaks to lots of people over the course of this book, and gives insight into how those conversations exactly play out. She weighs up their motivations and comments on their contradictions. She positions this deeply human field of work in a deeply human way, which grants the subject a large amount of nuance that isn’t always guaranteed.

Limiting: there isn’t a huge amount of meat here. The last 2 chapters on CSAM and legislation are built on actual numbers, experts, quantifiable trends. A lot of the other chapters have a lot of overlap in what they cover and are driven by describing individual videos or influencers. There’s a level of perverse voyeurism in getting to read about these badly behaved influencers, but I found very little basis for analysis, or much analysis that wasn’t vibes based. Interesting, as this type of conversation usually is, but … not necessarily edifying, I guess? Maybe if you’re someone so completely outside this world this would be hugely illuminating.

Idk. It’s super readable. This is a line of work that needs to be taken seriously, so journalism like this needs to exist to take it seriously.

I guess one final sidebar- I did think it’s interesting that in all the debate over parents vs social media companies about who needs to be stepping up, or doing more, the companies that request children in content aren’t addressed at all? Why has it become normal for companies who used to (and still do) hire child models who are regulated through child labor laws allowed to contractually demand child labor outside of those laws? Feels like a large area to analyze that was left entirely unaddressed and I haven’t seen addressed anywhere else.

[Emma Wright]

wish this had been way better. her thesis was basically “idk it’s really bad to put your kids online but I guess I get it because they make SO much money so it’s kind of fine and also I personally am 1000000% addicted to family influencers and it’s fine”

[Amber]

Wow, this book was fascinating! It’s not the first of its kind, and I’ve already read almost all the books the author references, but I do think it’s the best of its kind so far. It’s well-researched, well-delivered, and thorough. I personally have never consumed any kind of parent influencing/ family vlogging content, so the only account mentioned that I knew about was Ballerina Farm. But I’m invested in my demographic of moms in the trenches, so it all really spoke to me.

Her reporting on my church and its members (in Utah) was really uncomfortable and hard to read, but it’s true and it’s important to talk about. I didn’t love all of her takes on tradwives, because although I think performative motherhood (tradwives on the internet who make money acting out their job) is problematic and harmful, I do think it’s valid to *choose* to leave a stable career and be with your kids full time. That’s been my choice, and I genuinely find joy and meaning in the work I’m doing now. It seems like people can’t imagine that anyone could make that choice and not be oppressed.

I’m glad I read this book. I would recommend it to anyone who spends time on social media, particularly parents. I feel a little less compassion for mom influencers than the author concludes at the end, but I still think her conclusion is fair.

[Kenzie | kenzienoelle.reads]

While I know a lot about the current “trad wife” obsession, I knew little to nothing about the mommy bloggers and family vlog channels that preceded them and still rake in the views and the $$.

If you read YESTERYEAR and were fascinated, I highly recommend this book! Only in my opinion, this one is way more interesting😅 I could definitely tell that this was written by a journalist and I love that she had actual one on one conversations with so many of the people she referenced in this book. I was interested from beginning to end even though I had never heard of 90% of the people she talked about.

From the obscene amounts of money these influencers rake in, to the question of why so many LDS women in these spaces? There were some great deep dives.

Thank you Gallery books for the gifted book!!

[Scott Buchanan]

There were some interesting tidbits (The Mormon Church actually pays to support tradwife influencers, really?!), but after a bit it became repetitive (here’s another example and another and another).

It felt like with some editing this could have been a long form magazine article. The author cherry-picked or distorted some statistics beyond recognition to make some political points (what’s new?). Anyway, if one is super-interested in the topics of mom influencers and their income streams then this may be a helpful skim, beyond that I wasn’t impressed.

[Adriana]

“What is more interesting than a perfectly glossy exterior? Apparently the darkness it’s hiding.”

So many mommies (and some daddies) writing, posting, filming, monetising their entire lives and their children’s! This book is about how they produce their content, homeschool their kids in order to schedule filming, and then crash and burn when they make mistakes and their content flops, including teen moms, of course, as well as Mormons. It’s also about the staggering amounts of money they make, which, of course, is the whole point of posting. And it’s also about being cancelled, as well as about the sexualization of kids and pedophilia. There is also a chapter on legislation being passed to protect minors participating in family blogging.

I gotta give it to the author, she does try to dive a little deeper on the tradwife phenomenon and she succeeds. She explains it from a capitalist and feminist point of view and I liked that chapter.

Something very very obvious: these women have help, they have personel helping them. IDK why they all pretend they don’t, because from Asia to LatinAmerica, to Europe, I see mommies propped up by backup personnel and family. IDK why they aren’t more honest about it. Maybe because we are living in the era of the lying president. (Hello, Donnie!!!)

On a related subject, I know I’ll get stoned, (see if I care), but the author is such a whining little thing. I swear I don’t understand women who have a mom, a mother in law, a supportive husband, a part time nanny and a bunch of brothers and sisters pitching in (like the author) AND still complain about motherhood. Just what exactly is she complaining about? How hard can it be for a healthy young woman to do motherhood? She’s got a full support system. And yet, she complains. I swear, I don’t know how she fathoms single moms without family do it, but they manage. Still, she inserts her little whines about motherhood being hard. Get a grip, woman. You’ve got a whole village supporting you. Seriously, what a child!!!

I’d say this is a quick read. I read it in a single sitting on a Sunday. IMO it’s written like a very long Vanity Fair article. I honestly expected more depth than I got, but to be fair she does cover many topics, though not in depth. The writer made many posts on IG prior to publishing the book which is why I expected better content. For me, the marketing campaign leading up to the launch of the book turned out to be better than the book itself.

The author has a very distinctive name. I won’t be reading any more of her writing. I’ve also blocked her on my IG. Too much whining, too little depth. I’m sorry, I have better things to do with my time. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[EmG ReadsDaily]

Insight into the ethics of online content featuring children, internet fame and a childhood exposed on the internet.

[Wendelle]

'Smile, you're on camera' is the 24/7 reality of a subculture of 'family Youtubers' that achieve upward mobility, financial independence, stardom or notoriety, by monetizing views of the activities, adventures and realities of their family-- and thus, their kids-- online. As this book shows, some of these parents choose to publicize and monetize their kids from birth or infancy onwards, so it's good to have books like these that address and structurally unpack the vague unease that a lot of us may feel about this new phenomenon borne of the Internet.

As this book discusses, family vlogging really arose from a different phenomenon, which was mommy blogging or mothers writing longform essays about the raw, unfiltered, authentic experience of motherhood. This may include frank testimonies of aspects that were otherwise taboo, such as postpartum depression, the difficulties of recovery from childbirth, or even parental regret. Their success and proven interest in discussions of family life, has morphed in the current era into the industry of family vlogging or shows. Whereas the focus before was on essays from the mother's perspective, the current skyrocketing phenomenon is image-based, grids on Instagram, that purport to show parenthood and family life but tellingly, feature the kids most of all. Whereas before, blogs were just an outlet to interact with other mothers, now the book says, the Instagram grids and Youtube vids are edited products intentionally designed to earn money. This is done through sponsored ads, banner ads, or earnings from views. Most importantly, what really sells in this era are pictures and shots and videos and shorts of the kids.

This introduces a lot of ethical questions because the principal stars-- and financial workhorses--are minors who may not fully consent to what's happening or fully understand the repercussions of a childhood that's now posted permanently online. As this book successfully argues, for these kids, there's no separation of public life from private life. Videos of them crying over toys, encountering first milestones, or showing discomfort or grief are now consumed readily by thousands online. There's also no separation of work life from home life. Mom or dad can shove the videocamera in their face at the most inopportune moments. As this book also states, the issue of consent stands because it must be very hard for children to refuse the requests of their parents to film, when they depend on parents for survival. Most of the families featured badger and guilt their kids into participating, framing the activity as 'their job' and the 'way the family earns money to support the lifestyle'. Even when kids consent, there is the fact that they're minors, and just because they consent doesn't legitimize the filming and disclosures to be good for them. Minors may not concretely know what's good or bad for them. For better or for worse, these kids don't have a normal childhood and development. Even worse, as most of us know-- there are unsafe people online who use images of kids for pernicious ways.

The book does show that it's hard to insist that everything is simply worse for these children. For one, a lot of them grow up to like their lifestyle and look back on their childhood with fondness. As teens, they are set up with stardom, a following and a possible profit-making enterprise as influencers. A lot of other teens now aspire to have these things. For another, their parents did give him the material stuff that other parents can't afford. Luxuries like Disneyland and other vacations are regularly gifted to influencers by their sponsors.

This book covers an important, trendy subculture that is wise to discuss. We live in a world that's increasingly public, where everyone presents a 'public face' on social media. It's important to discuss whether children should be brought into this era, and at what times and what terms. It's also a journalistic look at what can sometimes seem a bizarre and befuddling phenomenon. I bet just a few generations back, a lifetime goal of permanent visibility is out of left field.

[clara ☆]

Dnf @ 16% (not something I’d usually do at all!)

Child influence and its dangers is something I’m really interested in, and I’d heard lots of good things about this book, so I was very excited. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations :(

I’ve seen lots of reviews say this felt more like a second or third draft than a finished book, or that the order of the chapters didn’t necessarily make sense, and while I agree, that’s not what bothered me the most.

In this book, Fortesa Latifi was, among other things, supposed to raise awareness about child influencers having zero privacy, often from the moment they’re born. What really bothered me was that she perpetuated this "absolutely no privacy" cycle by not anonymizing anything and sometimes going as far as copy pasting the personal info the parents posted about the kids.

Take, for example, "Chapter 3: Privacy for Sale: Monetizing Everyday Intimacies". In this chapter, Latifi talks about Bridie Hamilton’s thesis "Anything for Views Parenting: Framing Privacy, Ethics, and Norms for Children of Influencers on Youtube". She mentions that Hamilton outlined "salient characteristics of privacy violations" for these kids. For each of them, Latifi gives a real life example, giving away these kids’ info just like their parents. The one that shocked me the most was number 5, "revealing personally identifiable information". You would think she’d stay vague for this one. You’d be wrong! Her example was the following:

“Take, for example, [First name] [Middle name] [Last name], [birth weight], born on [Day of the week], [Month, day, year] at [time] to mother [name] who has [number] followers on Instagram"

Doesn’t anyone see a problem here???? Latifi copy pasted the mother’s Instagram caption with the kid’s full personal info (yes I checked and no Latifi didn’t change any of the personal details in the caption, they’re in the book exactly like they were posted by the mother). So even if the mother eventually deleted the post or her account, this kid will forever have their personal info in a book. And they’re not the only one.

Earlier in the book, she talks about a parent who described in detail an embarrassing story from the potty training days with one of their kids. So naturally, she mentioned the family, the kid in question, and told the embarrassing story.


So this is why I decided to DNF. I really didn’t like the approach Latifi took. Instead, if you’re interested in this topic, I’d recommend reading Shari Franke’s memoir "The House of My Mother". In it, Shari discusses her childhood as a child influencer, while preserving the privacy of her minor siblings (!) by anonymizing any stories they’re in.

[Tanja Berg]

This was really good, much better than expected. The author does a great job of analyzing the "sharenting" and "kidfluencing" that has taken over social media. Not to speak of the tradwife accounts. It's a very nuanced view, that tries to step away from demonizing the women who run the accounts while also showing how it can be detrimental to the children, and the family relations. However, some kids thrive and want to participate. Others are clearly exploited, and the children's privacy is often thrown to the winds.

I did not know that the predominantly Mormon trad wife accounts were sponsored by the Mormon church, but why should I be surprised. Selling a glossy and superficial take on the joys of motherhood while either not showing the drudgery, or refraining from showing the nannies and personal assistants involved in the more successful accounts. Tying women to the cooking top with a bunch of children at their skirts is exactly what the Mormon church wants. An independent woman is a terrible thing for the patriarchy.

Here is also the other side of the coin, that the author takes pains to show: for many of these women in the United States, "mom influencing" is the only option they have to take care of their families. There is no paid maternity leave at all and child care is prohibitively expensive. There is no wonder that many are trying their chances in the viral roulette. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to point fingers at individuals who are simply just trying to survive in a rotted system.

[Katharine]

3.5 ⭐️ overall an interesting read, especially for me since I have been watching family vlogs/shows since I was a kid myself. There were parts that were boring and it seems like this book is a long article basically saying how dangerous children being exposed like this can be, but the platform is so lucritive it can be hard for parents to say no to. There are finally laws being put into place to try to protect these children, but the laws are unable to keep up with how quickly this media changes and is consumed worldwide. Will it stop me and others from watching weird families? Sadly probably not completely but I do respect when parents do not show their children as much and make an effort to not focus videos on them specifically.

[Corrie Brown]

A very interesting, informative, and depressing read. I find it interesting that many of the reviews think that the writing was poor because the author didn't "choose a side". The author presented interviews, articles, and studies, offered her perspective while acknowledging the shortfalls and limitations of legal protections for children whose parents are monetizing their lives, while acknowledging they very real allure of financial compensation in the world of social media influencers. It was clear throughout the book that the author was opposed to child-based or child-centric content, and frequent hypocrisy of social media influencer parents. But, the author didn't allow her opinion to colour the journalistic nature of the book, which was the point.
A very good, and frustrating read (because of the content, not the author), in my opinion.

[Erin Odom]

This book was ok and definitely engaging enough to be a quick read/listen. As someone who was in the industry (or the industry that morphed into this industry) for more than 15 years, the content wasn’t surprising or unfamiliar to me, but I do think my background as a pro “OG” mommy blogger made this book more interesting to me than it would to many.

I especially appreciated how the author differentiated between OG mommy bloggers & influencer moms. Yes, the mom blogging industry did morph into the mom influencer industry, but there are some key areas where the industries are startlingly different. Mom bloggers, the author writes (and I can confirm this!), operated out of more authenticity & were primarily WRITERS who wrote about their motherhood journeys. Their children were “background” characters. Mommy bloggers often shared their kids’ faces and names but not to exploit them. (I never shared my kids’ names.) We started our sites that then morphed into businesses (yes, almost accidentally for many of us) more as online journals that transitioned to online communities. Before we knew it, we were making full-time incomes and the breadwinners (many of us) for our families. I digress. My point is that I’m grateful the author made this distinction.

That said, I found the latter half of this book a bit boring. The author seemed to drone on and on about things that could have been better captured in a few paragraphs and with fewer examples (the vast amounts of money influencers are making & the exploitation of their children). Yes, we get it: there is massive, massive money to be had in mom influencing. Back in my mom blogging days, the benchmark of success was hitting 6 figures/year (which I did by year 3 and sustained for more than a decade). I remembered when the new benchmark was 7 figures/year, and I thought: “I’m out…” I was not “out” of the industry, but I knew the sacrifices it would take to attain this would not be worth my sanity and time with my kids, which was the entire reason I started the blog in the first place.

The mom influencer industry money makes the old blogging benchmarks look laughable, as many are raking in MILLIONS per year. 1) I cannot even imagine. 2) I do not want to.

Overall, this book decently chronicles the cultural history of a modern phenomena that is the mom influencer culture. It made me all-the-more grateful that God led me to a new career (albeit a related one in publishing) because, toward the end of my blogging career, I knew that I would have to pivot to more influencing work in order to sustain the same level of income. While I do believe some can do that well and authentically (and some former colleagues have transitioned to that work), it personally made my skin crawl. I knew it was not for me. While I make less money on paper (although the wonderful benefits do even it out) in my publishing job, I have zero regrets for leaving this industry behind. It served me and my family well for a decade and a half, and when it was time to move on, God could not have made it any clearer.

ETA: I found the author’s voice a little annoying. She sounded like a “valley” girl with plenty of unnecessary “like” mentions. I wondered if this is the voice her typical readers know from her, though, because evidently she writes for Teen Vogue.

[Tyler Hancsak]

A MUST READ. This brings up SO MANY good themes about social media, being an influencer, and what families do to survive online. I was addictedddd to learning more from this author and all the data that she collected. It's a frightening tale, but brings up many truths to what people are doing online.

[Mattie Vandiver]

3.5 stars ?
I follow the author on social media and have really looked forward to reading this book. Some chapters were more interesting than others, but in general I felt like it just should have had more? More critique of influencers, more deep-probing questions, more statements around the ramifications of child influencing.

Truly an interesting topic…I just feel like so much more needs to be said!

[Laura Noggle]

I will say it was very interesting in a pop culture kind of way, but especially with all the Epstein stuff … the internet can be a really dangerous place especially for kids.

[Alexi Gallante]

An important book about mommy influencers exploiting their children for views/profit, and what it's like growing up with a camera trained on your most vulnerable moments. Some of the chapters made me feel sick to the stomach. I do wish I had gotten a bit more from this book than I did, but overall I would recommend, since this is a conversation we need to be having.

I ruined my instagram algorithm looking up all the case studies...