Why are People Still Watching Family Vloggers Like the LaBrants?
Lou’s story is a cautionary tale for those who think family vlogging is wholesome and harmless.
Lou, 27, was just eight years old when her mom started blogging about her online.
She says her mom was “very unwise with the information and the pictures” she posted on the blog and, thus, refuses to share the name of it.
On her TikTok channel, Lou says:
“…Nothing was sacred, and there was that constant feeling of being ‘on,’ which meant that even in the privacy of our home, you could expect the camera to be around and in any conversation that you had regardless of how embarrassing or intimate or private it was, it could end up on the blog.”
Her mom used the blog as her place to both praise and complain about motherhood. For Lou, it felt like a “reward and a punishment center.” It got worse when strangers agreed with her mother’s negative thoughts about them.
Lou talks about the long-term ramification this had on her, from anxiety to problems with intimacy. Her mom never shared videos, only pictures.
Imagine the negative effect on children when this is taken one step further, like with the business of family vlogging, where family lives are published daily. Parents of these vlogging channels understand that everything posted online stays there forever.
Yet when posting content about their children, there is a blatant disregard for their safety, privacy, consent, mental health, and long-term ramifications.
More drama, please
The lure of family vlogging is understandable.
You’re your own boss working from home. You get to spend time with your partner and children, do fun things, and make millions through viewership and endorsements.
What’s not to like? A lot, if you’re the child.
The family dynamics change when you become a family channel. A great example is the famous LaBrant family, with a following of 13.1 million on YouTube alone.
The LaBrants are a young couple with three children. They post family stuff, like dance recitals, going to the pool, and pranks. In 2019, they came under public scrutiny when they posted a video where their daughter is pranked into thinking they’re giving away their family dog.
It captures her crying even after they reveal it’s just a prank. The public claimed they had gone too far.
Then came another video titled “We left our house because of fires in California.” In the video, the husband said his wife had texted him, saying there was a “huge fire right by our house.”
But neighbors of the couple told Fox 11 that their part of the town was never in such danger to the point of evacuation, and they found the couple’s claims upsetting.
More controversy followed when in August of last year the couple posted a YouTube video titled “She got diagnosed with cancer (documentary).” The thumbnail for the video was a photograph of the couple, hand in hand with their three children.
At the start of the video, they talk as if their daughter has cancer, but six minutes in, it becomes apparent that she doesn’t. She isn’t even ill. The rest of the video shows the father visiting the parents of sick children. The public accused them of using cancer as clickbait.
Can you see the trend in these posts? Yep, drama, lots of it.
Nobody’s day-to-day life is that interesting. Like other family channels, the LaBrant family’s success relies heavily on engaging posts. They have to create drama to make it click-worthy.
Suddenly the entire family life is centered around what makes good content. The children, who are the main stars, must constantly devote their time to acting and performing for the perfect footage. Playtime turns into showtime.
Is that good for the children? Are the parents depriving them of a normal childhood? How about the long-term ramifications, like their mental health?
“But it’s no different than a Hollywood child star”
There’s a big difference between Hollywood child stars and social media child stars.
Hollywood child stars are on contracts stipulating their hours, schooling, and working conditions. When they go on set, they know they’re acting. When they go home, they’re back to being a child. There’s a clear separation that child social media stars don’t have.
For child social media stars, their home is their set. Imagine the confusion this creates for a young child, not to mention the stress and anxiety of having to be “on” all the time like Lou said.
Hollywood child stars are protected from exploitation by the Coogan Act, ensuring that children get the money, not the parents. It also requires 15% of all earnings to be set aside in a trust fund until they’re adults.
Child stars on social media have no labor laws protecting them. And their earnings are owned by their parents, who are their bosses. This creates a problematic dynamic where children can be exploited.
But people don’t seem to find anything wrong with family vlogging channels, even though it’s obvious that the children haven’t consented to any of it. It’s like the movie, The Truman Show, where unbeknownst to Truman, he has been the show’s star for a worldwide audience since he was born.
Scary crap, but it’s now an unfortunate norm, even among those not looking to monetize their children. Parents worry about how Facebook uses their data, but have they paused to contemplate that they’re breaching their children’s privacy by posting pictures and videos of them?
In 2019, The LaBrants made a vlog titled “Our Family Is Being Harassed.” The couple complained about numerous anonymous pizza orders made in their name. They had to call the police when one such order was delivered to their daughter’s school.
The LaBrants say this is not the first time, and many “weird” things have been dropped off at their porch, like “pictures of random men’s faces.”
The mother added:
“Whenever we’re in our home, we prefer no one comes by. I feel like your house should be like where you feel super safe…those things should be private.”
Ironic for a mom who has no problem using her home as the set for filming. She also has no issue using the real names of her children, posting where they’re going, what they’re doing, and their milestones — basically, the family’s whole life for their millions of followers.
The parents have even created separate Instagram accounts for their three children. Of course, the children are too young to consent, so the parents post pictures and videos for them.
Who’s protecting these kids from being exploited by their parents? What about their safety? Why are people enabling their behavior by watching them?
Controversy
Family vlogging channels are not new to controversy, like the family channel 8 Passengers, which has been clicked more than a billion times since its debut in 2015. It consists of the father, mother, and their six kids.
The parents, especially the mother, are known for their extremely strict parenting style, which she calls “tough love.” They have received backlash for punishing their son by taking away his bed for seven months or making one of her daughters cry by threatening to snip off the head of her favorite stuffed toy with scissors.
Or when the mother insisted on recording and posting talks with her daughter about her first menstrual period. The children have been branded the “6 Prisoners” by those who vehemently disagree with how they parent their kids.
Their sons have admitted on camera that they have been bullied in school and publicly humiliated, leaving them friendless. This is what they admitted while their mom was recording them. Imagine what else they’re hiding.
The couple has lost followers, advertisers, and sponsorships, thanks to the viewers complaining about the show. At its peak, it was pulling around 200,000 views a day, generating about $1600 a day in ad revenue or $584,000 a year.
Now the viewership has gone down to about 72,000 per day. And as sponsors and viewers vanished, the show plummeted from as high as $11 per thousand viewers to below a dollar.
And this brings me to the importance of viewers like you and me.
What you can do
Family vlogging is a business. Like any business, it needs a product that sells. Little children sell, and so do conflict and controversy. What it needs the most are buyers, though, to make any profit.
Buyers like advertisers, sponsorships, and viewers. As a viewer, you can start by unsubscribing to family channels that use their children to monetize their channels.
You can also start advocating for these children by writing or talking about it on social media channels like mom.unchartered, or you can educate your friends or family about the reality of family vlogging channels.
These children will one day become adults and start a movement condemning their parents for exploiting them. They’re also going to need a lot of therapy, like Lou admitted. And we’re going to have regrets for not acting sooner.
It’s going to happen.
Sign this petition. Protect the children.
P.S. A new legislation has been proposed to protect child actors in social media. It’s not a law yet, but definitely a good start.
