Utah Passes Legal Protections For Child Influencers

Child stars have been a hallmark of the entertainment industry since the advent of the entertainment industry, from the Mozart children dazzling the courts of Europe as traveling musicians to Hollywood icons like Judy Garland and Brooke Shields. And with the advent of social media, a new kind of child star has emerged: the child influencer. From unboxing videos to family vlogs, children can and have earned millions from channels and accounts they contribute to. But as with their cultural predecessors, child influencers often report exploitation and abuse in their rise to fame. And all too often, they do not see the fruits of their labor as few laws exist to ensure or protect their earnings. But now, Utah — a unique hub of family influencer culture — has become the fourth state to protect child performers with the passage of H.B. 322.

The bill, sponsored by Democratic State Representative Doug Owens, establishes more robust protections for child actors and influencers. It was championed by Shari Franke, one of the six child stars featured on the 8 Passengers YouTube channel run by her mother, convicted abuser Ruby Franke. In speaking to Utah legislators last October, Franke was unequivocal in her condemnation of family vlogging, which she categorized as “24/7 labor.”

“I want to be clear: there’s never, ever a good reason for posting your children online for money or fame,” she said in a particularly poignant moment of her testimony. “There’s no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger. ... The only people harmed by child influencer laws are the parents exploiting their children.”

The law does not ban family blogging or prevent children from achieving influencer status, but it does establish a formula to calculate a child’s entitlement to earnings made from their content. Moreover, it requires families making more than $150,000 a year who use children in monetized or sponsored videos to establish a trust fund for those children.

“If people are making money from their kids, then the kids ought to get a share of that income at least,” Owens told Deseret News earlier this year. “That’s one way to protect them, at least a little bit,” Owens said.

The new law also goes further than similar legislation in Illinois and California in that it offers children the “right to deletion” once they turn 18. In other words, former child influencers have the right to have content they appear in deleted or edited.

In her testimony to the Utah Senate last year, Franke pleaded with lawmakers to understand the consequences of a child effectively monetizing their existence. “How do we determine how much a child should get paid for appearing in family content? What price is worth giving up your childhood? ... At the time [I appeared in 8 Passengers content], I would have told you I had a choice in what was filmed, but I’ve come to learn that every child influencer in a way suffers from Stockholm syndrome.”

While this bill does not ameliorate all of the various potential harms of the child entertainer industry, it does set an important precedent in establishing that this is work and the children working deserving compensation and protection.