I’m sure I wasn’t the only little girl begging my parents to start a YouTube channel, watching other kids my age share their wonderful, perfect-looking lives on the internet and wishing to be one of them. I could never understand why my parents would tell me no, but looking back now I’m extremely grateful they did. Those kids I watched have grown up with all sorts of trauma and family issues brought on by their online lifestyle.
A few years ago, when YouTube was in its prime, many people would follow their favorite family blogs and devour content with family drama and upsets. However, now as those children have grown up, society has started to raise questions on whether the whole idea of family blogging is ethical. Between using your kids as a main source of income, to trying to catch private family moments on camera for better entertainment, to using clickbait and fake titles to scam their fan base into watching, overall, the genre is extremely burnt out and we should as a society stop supporting and feeding into it.
The first problem with these “mommy bloggers” is the exploitation of their children in both private and very humiliating moments. One of the most extreme examples of this is a woman named Ruby Franke, a mom who runs a family YouTube channel called “8 Passengers.” At least she did run the channel, before she went to jail for felony child abuse. Franke not only posted videos of her daughters shaving, shopping for private undergarments and having ‘the talk’ with her son, but she also posted her very extreme punishments that started to raise questions from former fans. This all came to a climax when one of her children ran to a neighbor for help, severely malnourished and with open wounds. Franke was promptly taken to jail. While in the courtroom, Franke sends an apology to her children.
“I’ll never stop crying for hurting your tender souls, my willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly. I took from you all that was soft and safe and good,” Franke said. So, the question is, was Ruby Franke always a bad person, or did living her life on camera drive her to make decisions in favor of money rather than her family? We never really will know, but we all know that money can corrupt people which is yet another issue.
Another problem is that these parents depend on their children for content and money, which is a lot of pressure to put on a child who’s still developing. These children will grow up not knowing normality. A consequence of this is that most of these kids are either homeschooled or pretty lonely at school. When your parents are constantly shoving a camera in your face, trying to catch your most dramatic or ‘entertaining’ moments for views, I wouldn’t blame any of the kids for not wanting to go to school, or for other kids steering away from them after seeing all of this child’s worst moments forever out there on the internet.
Overall, we need to stop supporting and keeping up with family blogging. If they make it warmhearted and cute, let’s be honest, nobody will watch it. But, if they make it dramatic and exciting, they exploit their kids as well as invite all sorts of creepy people out there watching to see private content of little kids. This will help so many kids around the world be able to experience a normal, carefree childhood like we all deserve. As a society, we should be unfollowing these channels and spread the word so that their videos won’t be monetized, and the families will stop.
