See ‘Like, Follow, Subscribe’ Review: The Online Family Circus by Nic Rowan. He reviews the book Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online written by Fortesa Latifi. Excerpt:
"The story of these influencers begins in the early 2000s, when the first mom bloggers came online. Websites tended to be more text-focused and few bloggers had discovered how to monetize their work. That soon changed. Danielle Wiley, one of those early bloggers, recalls how, at a conference in 2006, organizers provoked a furor when they announced that websites within their network would now be eligible to run banner advertising. Many mom bloggers, Ms. Wiley tells Ms. Latifi, worried that the incentives that come with monetization would taint their work.
They were right, but ultimately it wasn’t the website ads that transformed their creative pastime into a money-making industry. In 2005 the arrival of YouTube made it easy for anyone with a camera to upload videos to a personal channel. Suddenly everyone could star in her own reality-TV show. And video is much easier to monetize than text. In addition to a website’s display advertising, anything shown on camera can be turned into an ad; it’s even easier when the product is child-related. Changing a baby’s diaper? Show off the label. Mixing a baby’s formula? Recommend the brand and drop a link to the manufacturer’s website. Sippy cups, strollers, slings, bottles—young children are almost endlessly accessorizable. For resourceful parents, children present a massive potential for ad sponsorships.
These days family vlogging is at the heart of a multibillion-dollar influencer industry. The most popular accounts tend to be those featuring large families, religious families, families raising special-needs children or otherwise living in unusual circumstances. The best way to grow an audience is to have more children and then feature the children prominently online, especially when they get hurt or sick. One marketing analyst tells Ms. Latifi, for example, that the LaBrant family, which has more than 12 million followers on YouTube, probably makes about $3 million annually from sponsorships and views. Most of the content is banal. But some of the more popular videos are sensational. A recording showing the birth of one daughter has more than 24 million views. Another video, featuring the same child and misleadingly titled “She Got Diagnosed With Cancer,” has more than 4 million.
Fans of these family circuses tell Ms. Latifi that they tune in to escape from their own lives, to feel like they are a part of someone else’s family. But they also admit to less-noble fixations. Many are fascinated by things they feel they should not be seeing: a teenager shaving her legs for the first time; children throwing up or having tantrums; young women having their first periods, their first sex talks, their first trips bra shopping. The fact that the videos are uncomfortable is what makes them attractive. Ms. Latifi confesses that she, too, is guilty of this tendency. “It is pure rubbernecking and I can’t stop,” she says."
I have had some posts before about how the economy affects parents' decisions on having babies. Some were on policies to encourage having babies. But this is the first time I have seen something that suggests that some parents are having babies with the intention of using them to make money.
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