For family bloggers, kids make money. A Utah lawmaker wants to make sure they’re compensated, too

The Capitol in Salt Lake City is pictured as lawmakers convene a special legislative session on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

What’s the difference between a child actor and the child of a family-focused social media influencer? 

With family bloggers now racking up millions of followers, and dollars, by posting their daily routines and parenting tactics online, one Utah lawmaker says the line between them and the parents of child actors is becoming increasingly blurred. And current Utah law offers these children little protection — nothing prevents their parents from pocketing their entire paycheck. 

If Rep. Doug Owens, D-Millcreek, has his way, Utah could become the next state to ensure child actors and the children of social media influencers some of the revenue earned from their work.

“If you are earning money as a child actor, performer, or influencer, your parents — or whoever’s making the money from it — need to set some percentage aside in a trust,” Owens told Utah News Dispatch on Tuesday. 

Owens said he opened a bill file that would essentially require parents and businesses to set up Coogan Accounts for child actors and influencers. Named after child actor Jackie Coogan, who starred in Charlie Chaplin’s cast in 1919 and in some of the biggest films of the 1920s but was left with almost none of the earnings as an adult, Coogan laws are in place in California, New York, Illinois, Louisiana and New Mexico. 

In most cases, they require at least 15% of the child’s earnings to be put into a trust account that they can access later in life. 

That’s what Owens is eying right now, although he floated some other ideas on Tuesday. 

They include letting former child stars tell a social media platform to take down their image once they become an adult; requiring parents to obtain a work permit, depending on how much time their kids spend filming; making social media companies disclose how they are promoting family-based content; creating laws that protect children’s personal details or information; making sure children have legal representation; or even creating a union to protect child stars. 

“​​But I think the first thing that a lot of states have already done is protect child actors,” said Owens. “And I don’t see that a child actor is much different than a child influencer or family influencer, so that financial protection would be a first step.” 

While a law that targets the parents of child actors is relatively simple, social media influencers are harder to define. For some, it’s a hobby that barely earns any money — for others, it’s an incredibly lucrative, full-time job. 

Once parents turn their social media career into a licensed business, filing tax returns and deductions, Owens said the law would apply to them. 

“If they’re getting to that level of accounting, then they could easily also account a little bit more and protect their kids’ financial futures,” Owens said. 

With its focus on family values, Utah is hotbed for parenting-oriented social media influencers, sometimes called family vloggers or mommy bloggers. The industry has yielded at least one high-profile case of child abuse in recent years — Ruby Franke, whose daughter spoke to lawmakers last week about the trauma, humiliation and lack of consent that she experienced. 

Lawmakers want to stiffen penalties for child abuse cases so severe they can be called ‘torture’

Speaking during a Legislative Business and Labor Interim Committee meeting, Shari Franke said her entire childhood was recorded for strangers on the internet. Her mother’s now defunct YouTube channel “8 Passengers” at one point racked up nearly 2.5 million followers. 

In September 2023, Ruby Franke was arrested and charged with child abuse after her 12-year-old malnourished child ran to a neighbor’s door asking for help. Police later found Franke’s 10-year-old child in the home of her associate, Jodi Hildebrandt. 

Both Franke and Hildebrandt were sentenced to four one-to-15 year prison terms for child abuse.

Franke was the target of controversy and allegations of child abuse even before her arrest. But her daughter, Shari, said she wasn’t speaking to lawmakers as a victim of an abusive parent, but rather a victim of family vlogging. 

“There is never, ever a good reason for posting your children online for money or fame. There is no such thing as a moral or ethical family blogger,” Franke told lawmakers. 

The Frankes had what Shari described as a full-fledged business, with their kids working around the clock. 

“It is more than just filming your family life and putting it online. It is a full time job, with employees, business credit cards, managers and marketing strategies,” she said. “The difference between family vlogging and a normal business, however, is that all the children are employees. Children, from before they are born to the day they turn 18, have become the stars of family businesses on YouTube, Instagram and other social media platforms.” 

The YouTube channel became her family’s primary source of income, Shari said, and she did receive some compensation — sometimes she was rewarded $100 for her performance, or taken shopping or on a vacation. 

But the irony was that it was often the “performances” of Shari and her siblings that generated that revenue in the first place. And often, Shari said that content winds up humiliating her later in life. That includes a video where she accidentally waxed off an eyebrow, or was “violently ill,” earning her the “leading role in the video that day.” 

“As children, we do not understand the consequences of filming our lives and posting it for the world to see. We cannot give consent to our parents to post our lives. In any other context, it is understood that children cannot give consent. But for some reason, people think family vlogging is different.”