- Family vlogging and child-oriented content have been popular on the internet for ages.
- However, a new wave of creators, including so-called "watchdog moms," are pushing back on this trend.
Mada Graviet built a following of over 515,000 people in the last couple of years with a variety of TikToks, namely clothing hauls, daily vlogs, and many clips featuring her two-year-old son, Rez.
Her fans were as enamored with Rez as they were with Graviet herself. She posted frequent videos of him napping in his stroller, showing off adorable fits, and in funny skits. However, late last year, he stopped appearing in TikToks altogether. The absence prompted viewers to ask what happened to him.
In December, Graviet filmed a response, explaining that it didn't "feel good anymore" to record her young son so she could have content on her own channel. Plus, and most importantly, she said her son began verbalizing that he didn't want to be filmed anymore.
@madagraviet Replying to @oxcasewill ♬ original sound - mada
"I don't ever want him to feel like, 'Make content for mommy,'" she said in the video, explaining that she began filming him for TikTok when he was only five months old. "I acknowledge that I posted him for a long time, and as time went on I learned more and have changed what I'm doing," she said.
The announcement drew a largely positive response from Graviet's fans. Commenters said they're proud of her for drawing this boundary for her son.
Graviet is part of a new wave of momfluencers and parent creators who are choosing not to show or spotlight their children on the internet anymore. Parents are both becoming more conscious of who's profiting when they feature their children on their own social media accounts, and about potential safety risks, like predators being able to easily find these videos.
Family vlogging has been a cornerstone of internet video content for ages
Since social media has been around, parents filming and sharing videos of their young children have been mostly normalized. And, at times, even lucrative.
One of the most widespread content genres online is family vlogging, which usually involves parents documenting "day in the life" family videos and broadcasting their young children performing various activities. Popular TikTok hashtags used for these videos, like #MomTok and #FamilyVlog, have over 32 billion and 500 million cumulative views, respectively.
While most family vlogs are quite mundane, there are times when they can be exploitative and even abusive. Perhaps the most infamous case involved the YouTube channel FamilyOFive, whose mom and dad creators were convicted of child neglect in 2017 after they posted videos in which they broke their children's toys and screamed at them under the guise of a "prank."
In 2019, The LaBrant Family faced widespread social media backlash for an April Fool's Day video that showed the YouTuber parents telling their daughter, who was 6 at the time, that they gave her puppy away.
Despite ongoing ethical and legal issues, family vlogging has endured as a staple of platforms like YouTube, where controversy-ridden channels like the ACE Family, the Bee Family, and the LaBrant Family continue to have millions of viewers who tune in every day.
Parent creators are now starting conversations about the dangers of showing children on the internet
The tenor surrounding family content seems to be changing, however slowly.
Janie, a momfluencer with over 10,000 TikTok followers, told Insider she only features her children in videos today if their "faces are concealed" or if they're mostly in the background.
"There's a lot of bad people on the internet that have ill intentions and I do not want to expose my children to that," said Janie, whose two children are 11 months and 4. "Another reason is that they can't consent to me plastering them on the internet and I advocate for autonomy."
@allforthemm Wheres my mamas that dont show their babies full faces for privacy?! #sharenting #kidsprivacymatters #momtok ♬ YUH IM A MOTHHAA - Industry Music
Janie said she was inspired to start concealing her children in videos from other influencers like Catie Reay (@thetiktokadvocate) and Sarah Adams (@mom.uncharted). Reay and Adams are part of a wider network of self-anointed "watchdog moms" who make videos calling attention to the ways adults accidentally or intentionally exploit their children with online content. They also stress the importance of maintaining a child's right to privacy.
In one of Adams' recent videos, she lambasted the way some parents seem to "care more about getting a 'viral moment' on Christmas morning" instead of properly spending time with their kids.
@mom.uncharted Then they publicly post the video and allow their children to be bullied and criticized by strangers online- oh, the magic of the holidays #socialmedia #trending #viral #christmas #parenting #parents #parentsoftiktok #viralvideo #sharenting #exploitation #dobetter #momsoftiktok #dadsoftiktok ♬ Coi Leray Players DJ Saige Mashup - Saige
These influencers are also very aware of the ways predators can archive and propagate images of internet-famous children and use their likenesses to create disturbing and non-consensual deepfake content.
"Once you post something on social media, you lose control of it, and you don't know where it will end up," Adams said in a recent video.
Parents no longer want to take these risks. In a video explaining why she decided to stop showing off her kids, mom influencer Dakota Dudley said she was startled into change when she saw a video from another creator who said her child's images were shared on a child porn website.
"It sucks because I love my girls," said Dudley, who has over 1.5 million followers on TikTok. "I can't take the chance of knowing that there's creepers out there."
@babywearingmama Reply to @emilyharames ♬ original sound - Dakota Dudley
Dr. Mary Jean Amon, an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida who has done research on parenting styles and social media use, told Insider that we're only beginning to understand the longer-term effects of "young children being featured in online content."
Amon said parents sharing their lives openly can be positive, like showing affection and documenting happy memories for the future. But it can also have downsides, like unintentionally giving out private information, embarrassing the child, and strangers misusing the digital content.
"Oftentimes, the child whose photograph or information is shared is not old enough to consent or comprehend the nature of social media and its potential risks," Amon explained.
Still, some fans are wrestling with whether these changes are too little too late
The discussion around some of these changes sparked conflicting discourse recently after the mega-popular TikToker Maia Knight started covering her twins' faces in videos. The single mother has over 8 million followers on the platform and grew to fame from sharing bounteous clips of her two children.
After Knight began concealing their faces — either by positioning the camera away or by pixelating their faces — she received some backlash from confused fans who were upset about the decision.
"Why are they covered up now?? What happened?" one user wrote on a clip. Knight has turned the comment sections off of other videos.
Knight addressed the chatter in a video on December 23, saying that she was "not taking a big stance about showing your kids" online, but was making a choice to protect her daughters. She said she was slowly privating all of her videos and condemned a few people who were mad in her comment sections.
@maiaknight ♬ original sound - Maia Knight
Still, some critics accused the influencer of implementing these changes way too late. For one, she's already grown a massive following off of their likenesses. And others believe she has already done irreparable harm by allowing fans to develop parasocial relationships with her toddlers.
But the general response has been overly supportive of Knight and these widespread changes in the parenting influencer industry.
"Some people are like, 'it's too late.' It's never too late to make a better decision," said fellow TikToker Mayte Elizabeth. "That's what she's doing right now, considering how out of control some of her fanbase is."