Children Are Making It Big (For Everyone Else): The Need for Child Labor Laws Protecting Child Influencers

Abstract

Child influencers are a large part of social media’s advertising success. Child influencers earn millions each year, with the most successful of them earning upwards of $29 million. They make their money from sponsored content and monetizing their social media platforms. Currently, child influencers have no legal rights through traditional child labor laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 or state-based child actor laws. Only one state—Illinois—has passed legislation specifically targeted at protecting child influencers. As a result, the risk of financial, physical, and psychological exploitation of child influencers is one that cannot be ignored. Because of the rapid expansion of child influencers and the lack of regulation or legislation to prevent the exploitation of these children, Congress must enact federal legislation to ensure the safety of children across the nation.

This Article addresses the fact that child influencers are working and should thus be afforded protection through a child labor regime. Additionally, this Article details how child influencers face their own unique risks—apart from other traditional child employment—which requires tailored laws. Specifically, this Article proposes federal legislation that would help solve financial exploitation of child influencers by requiring 15 percent of the worker’s earnings to be put into a trust account. Further, the proposed legislation provides production regulations that ensures child influencers remain in school, imposes restrictions on the number of hours child influencers can work, and requires parental involvement in advertising campaigns that occur outside of the home.

Keywords: Child influencers, child labor laws, social media, influencer, Coogan, kidfluencer