PBS News Hour

AMNA NAWAZ: On platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, so-called momfluencers share parenting tips and candid moments raising their kiddos.

It's part of a multibillion-dollar online influencing industry, and given its focus on kids, raises questions about privacy and consent.

Stephanie Sy reports on a trend among some of those content creators to avoid showing their kids.

DEJA SMITH, Content Creator: We're getting ready for day one of potty training my 2-year-old.

She's 25 months.

STEPHANIE SY: On TikTok, Deja Smith has built a following by posting about her life as a stay-at-home mother of a toddler.

DEJA SMITH: I'm also a first-time mom and don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I'm just a regular mom, middle class just living kind of like a boring life every day.

So people love that.

STEPHANIE SY: But one thing you won't see in her videos, at least not anymore, is her daughter's face, a decision she made about a year into being a content creator.

DEJA SMITH: I was getting a lot of interaction under my videos that were just specifically pertaining to my daughter.

I always wanted to base my content around me.

That's my whole point of -- it's centered around me, you know?

So when people are starting to center it around my daughter, that's when it got uncomfortable for me.

STEPHANIE SY: Smith scrubbed her social media of her daughter's face, even making content about the challenge of keeping a toddler out of her videos.

DEJA SMITH: Back up.

Back up.

STEPHANIE SY: Smith is part of a growing trend among so-called momfluencers, choosing to not show their kids in their content.

MENZIE, Content Creator: When I first started doing it, like 12 people were seeing my videos.

Things change when you gain more traction.

STEPHANIE SY: Content creator Menzie doesn't use her last name publicly, part of a strategy to protect her kids' identity.

She's built up a following making TikToks on the importance of emotional validation, including where she embodies kids' perspectives.

MENZIE: Knock it off.

I can't deal with this today.

I can't either.

Obviously, it is easier to show kids.

It's easy to play on that parasocial relationship.

When kids feel -- when other people feel bonded to your kid, and they feel like they know your kid, they become that much more of a -- that much more invested in your life.

STEPHANIE SY: Menzie says her decision to not show her child is largely because he doesn't have a say.

MENZIE: It's hard to think about it because we didn't have the Internet when we were young, but if all of my childhood pictures and videos were just out for anyone to see, and I didn't realize it for the longest time, and then all of a sudden I did realize it, that would not go over well with me and my parents.

I know that's how I would feel, and so I don't feel comfortable doing it to him.

BRITTANY BALYN, Content Creator: You can pick out anything from the closet here that you want.

STEPHANIE SY: Brittany Balyn has built a large audience on YouTube over more than a decade and made content creation her full-time.job.

BRITTANY BALYN: My channel has evolved with me.

And in the motherhood sphere, it was very much -- there was a lot of great information, but it was showing the highlights and the positive moments.

And, of course, there is that.

But I felt like more of just the real and the raw needed to be shared to help these moms not feel alone.

STEPHANIE SY: Last August, Balyn announced to her more than half-million subscribers that she would no longer show her 3-year-old daughter in her videos.

BRITTANY BALYN: I hope that you stay with me and a part of my channel.

And if you don't, that's OK, because the only opinion that really matters to me is that of my daughter.

One thing that really kind of triggered something was meeting another mother at a kid's class and her, instead of coming to me first, meeting my daughter, saying her name, knowing things about her.

And there was no ill intent from the mother.

It just made me realize that, in the wrong hands, this information could be used in a very sinister fashion.

STEPHANIE SY: Balyn says that the response has been overwhelmingly positive and that it has not affected her income.

But she's also made the decision to leave her old videos with her kiddo up, for now.

BRITTANY BALYN: Once something is up, it lives forever, whether you're a content creator or you're just posting to Facebook, and maybe I will change my mind one day.

As a mother, as an adult, you are always learning and growing and evolving.

But, as of right now, the content is still live.

STEPHANIE SY: Despite the trend toward removing kids from some momfluencer content, many children's lives are on display on the Internet.

And some states are responding with new laws.

Last year, Illinois passed a first-of-its-kind law requiring parents to set aside a portion of earnings from social media content that features their kids for their kids.

This year, at least seven other states have introduced similar legislation.

Fortesa Latifi is a features reporter for "Teen Vogue" who has been covering all of this and joins me now.

Fortesa, it's good to have you on the "NewsHour."

I just read a piece that you wrote titled "The Kids Who Had Their Childhoods Made Into Content."

It's about the impacts that living one's life on social media has had on some kids, now adults.

Tell me some of the stories you uncovered.

FORTESA LATIFI, "Teen Vogue": Yes, it was really interesting.

So I talked to a young woman who has grown up on a YouTube channel.

She first went viral when she was a toddler.

And by the time she was in elementary school, her parents had quit their full-time jobs because YouTube was the family business.

And she told me: "There's nothing my parents can do now to take back the amount of work I had to put in."

And that was so striking to me.

STEPHANIE SY: How pervasive is hearing stories like that?

I mean, based on your reporting, are you getting the sense that there's like a whole generation of kids who are being exploited online by their parents?

FORTESA LATIFI: There is a whole generation of kids that this is affecting.

And we're just seeing those kids reach adulthood now and start to tell their stories.

STEPHANIE SY: We just heard from some momfluencers who have decided voluntarily to remove their kids' faces from their content.

What is driving those moms to make that decision?

And are they in the minority?

FORTESA LATIFI: It's just this cultural conversation that's happening around child privacy and what kids consent to and what they can't consent to online.

And so do we want to be creating these really detailed online footprints for our kids?

People are starting to ask that question.

And it's interesting because I would say that the majority of parent influencers still do show their kids online.

But we have had some really big creators with millions of followers who have made the decision to take their kids offline.

And it's interesting because, a year or so ago, you would never question whether an influencer was going to show their kid online.

But now it is a question.

And I think even knowing that it's not a given shows how much the culture has changed just in the last year.

STEPHANIE SY: Do you have any sense of how their followers feel about them taking their kids' faces offline?

You heard one mother say that viewers of the content kind of relate to seeing the kid.

Do those moms sort of suffer monetarily when they make that decision?

FORTESA LATIFI: They do definitely, because people want to see their kids.

They have gotten attached to the kids.

They are interested in seeing them.

And so when they don't show them anymore, their views may go down, they may get less branded content, less sponsored content deals.

And so that is difficult.

And one thing that I have talked to some several mom influencers about who have told me that people's reaction to them taking their kids offline made them sure that they were doing the right thing.

So people would say, I miss them so much.

Their TikTok aunts and uncles miss them.

We love them.

We just want to see them.

How could you take them from us?

And the intensity of that reaction proved to the parents that they had done the right thing.

STEPHANIE SY: I love that you write in your article that it's maternal instinct that made these momfluencers make that decision.

There was a law last year passed in Illinois.

It became the first to require that money made from these videos would be set aside for kids that are featured in them, like in a trust fund.

What are the impacts of that law, and how much traction are you seeing for legal protections for children's - - children of influencers elsewhere?

FORTESA LATIFI: Well, it's a huge deal, because, like you said, Illinois made history with that bill and with that law.

It was the first law in the entire country to protect the monetary gains of child influencers.

So that's a really big deal, because we know that, often, the first one is the most difficult to pass.

And now we have seen this kind of like mirror happening, where now there are seven other states that have introduced laws that would either mirror Illinois' or even take it further and have privacy protections with what is called the right to be forgotten.

But it's really fascinating, because, just last year, we passed the very first law in the country, and now there are seven other states that are working to become the second.

And so you do see this kind of momentum that came after the Illinois law that just wasn't there before.

STEPHANIE SY: Do you think that the tide is really turning toward more protections for kids and teens online?

I mean, a lot of child advocates would say a 3-year-old simply can't consent to being put out publicly on social media, even if it's by their parents.

FORTESA LATIFI: I do think the tide is changing.

And I think you can see that even in the comments of influencers who still show their kids.

Like, people -- half of the comments are positive, but half of the comments are negative now, which is really a huge change.

I mean, last year, no one was commenting to these influencers that they were exploiting their children, or are you saving money for the kids, or how does this work?

And now you see it, and it's half of their comments are asking them to address this kind of elephant in the room.

So, this controversy is really picking up speed.

STEPHANIE SY: Fortesa Latifi, a features reporter for "Teen Vogue," thanks so much.

FORTESA LATIFI: Thank you for having me.