00:06:00.640And the topic you brought today is fascinating and such like a big one and one that we have discussed a lot on the show recently because we've been kind of on a tech streak on the show.
00:06:17.860And not to like, not to put words into anyone else's mouths, but I didn't grow up with social media.
00:06:25.660um i got it late college i would say was the earliest that i got some friends of mine got
00:06:33.360it when i was in high school but i was kind of a late bloomer as they say and i know it sounds
00:06:38.920kind of like back in my day but i'm i'm pretty thankful for it honestly um in a lot of ways
00:06:45.020and this uh this kind of new phenomenon of um all of our lives but especially in this
00:06:54.980outline, Bridget, of children's lives being on the internet is fairly new and in a lot of ways
00:07:05.240kind of disturbing, a little unsettling. I did want to ask before we get into this conversation,
00:07:13.240both of you, what was your kind of experience with social media? And also, and you can pass
00:07:18.760on this one because I know it's kind of a fraught subject. Does your family follow you
00:07:23.660on social media oh what a good question well you know i we just before we got on here talked about
00:07:34.380the fact that i am from the generation of beepers um and that the internet was not a thing until i
00:07:40.240almost i got into college essentially like at the tail end of everything the beeper was due to my
00:07:46.660job. And at my first job out of college, I was a child abuse investigator. And those systems were
00:07:54.260getting online. I was still in the time where we were doing everything by hand, essentially.
00:08:01.760That was where I, the technology and social media was fairly new for me. I think outside of college
00:08:14.580And since then, I'm like, okay, I like the social media thing.
00:08:18.060But I'm also very grateful, especially seeing what my nieces and nephew have gone through with social media, which they are Gen Zers, so it's a whole different level.
00:11:36.760and in different accounts and different platforms.
00:11:39.480And I know as we're talking about the subject you're bringing, which I have a lot of opinions, so I'm really, really excited and a lot of concerns, just as being in child welfare, but in that level of what we see and what is posted and who has control of what is being posted.
00:11:57.540Absolutely. It's so complicated. And I think it's complicated for me as a grown woman in my 30s. I can only imagine how much more complicated it gets navigating this as a young person.
00:12:08.200So I know that I came on the show quite a while ago to talk about Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, and what her whistleblowing revealed about what Facebook and Instagram knows about how social media negatively impacts young girls.
00:12:22.100And so that was a conversation that we had.
00:12:24.160But this conversation is a little bit different because it really asks what happens when it's not the, you know, teen or the child getting on social media themselves.
00:12:34.720What happens when it's the mom or the parent who is kind of forcing, I use that word in quotes, forcing their child to be part of their social media content, part of their social media persona.
00:12:46.260And so on my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet, I did this fascinating interview with this woman, Sarah Adams, and she runs the TikTok account Mom Uncharted.
00:12:55.220She told me that she calls her account Mom Uncharted because social media, if you think about it, is really like this uncharted territory for parenting.
00:13:03.500And we really do not know how social media will impact our kids.
00:13:08.500If you want to listen to the whole interview, check out my podcast.
00:13:12.640But her social media account is dedicated to explorations of kind of mom influencing and like mom run accounts and all the different ways that parents, it's honestly, it's usually moms, use their children for content on social media.
00:13:28.420She told me that social media, you know, the dynamics around it have changed so quickly.
00:13:32.920Not that long ago, if I was to say something like, oh, sharing your kid on social media, you might think that means like posting a cute picture on Facebook where your great aunt or your uncle or something might like it.
00:13:44.280Now, kids who are not even really old enough to understand what it means, not to mention not old enough to consent to it, can have their most intimate or sensitive or embarrassing moments seen by millions of people on social media platforms like TikTok.
00:17:14.320Is it the parent that's posting this content?
00:17:17.000Like all of these questions that come from, from what it like one level can seem like, oh, this is just a cute video of this kid falling over or something.
00:17:27.500But when you dig deeper than that, there's just all of these other questions.
00:17:32.940Exactly. And you put it so well, right?
00:17:35.240Like just to level set, I don't feel like every parent who shares content of their kid is created equal here.
00:17:42.520Like, there's a pretty big difference between, you know, sharing the occasional family vacation video or, like, cute picture or whatever with your friends on social media or even the wider internet.
00:17:53.180There's a difference between that, which I think most people do, and is, like, fine, and running a business that generates income from relying on an audience of millions of people engaging with your child, right?
00:18:04.820And there are so many questions that you just kind of alluded to and reasons for why we should sort of be asking questions about what that is doing to our kids.
00:18:13.460One of the things that I think is unique about social media and technology in general is how quickly it moves.
00:18:21.840And I think that when it comes to our kids and the impact on our kids, it would behoove us to not move really quickly.
00:18:28.000It will behoove us to take a minute, pump the brakes, and do some real deep thought about how we want our children to be showing up on social media and whether or not it's actually good for them psychologically, emotionally, and whether or not it's actually safe.
00:18:40.880Like, in the real, you know, in every implication of the word, like, sometimes it is not safe to share so much of your child on social media with strangers.
00:18:51.120You know, first, there might be a negative psychological impact on kids.
00:18:55.840I really wanted to find, I was like, oh, I'm going to get some good, meaty research on this.
00:19:00.400But as the uncharted part of Sarah Adams' TikTok name suggests, there kind of isn't a ton of good research out there about the way that being used for content by your parents would impact children.
00:19:15.740And that's partly because it's just so new.
00:19:18.360Morgan Sung over at NBC, she's one of my favorite internet reporters,
00:19:21.320and she's really been following this beat of young people
00:19:24.680who have been kind of turned into content by their parents.
00:19:28.620So Morgan spoke to Lindsay Cooley, who is a licensed clinical child psychologist,
00:19:32.180who said that because social media is so relatively new,
00:19:35.320there is not really a lot of clinical research on the long-term effects
00:22:51.420But if I don't do it, but I do think that, and please don't come at me, listeners.
00:22:57.660But I do think like in the same way people sometimes use like pets or puppies to be like, oh, look how cute. Click on this content. Here they are. People are using their kids like that. Like, see, here's my life. Here's this like view of my life. And like, oh, what did my kid do today to get these clicks?
00:23:16.900And if that is like, oh, my kid is very sick and I am going through a hard time, please, you know, give me these likes, give me this engagement.
00:23:29.780You know, it's interesting, too, as we were talking about the levels, like you're talking about social media etiquette, which has been a conversation like how do you go from this?
00:23:38.360But also how social media has grown, like when you think of the initial Facebook, it was literally to connect with college friends for me or your past friends or high school friends that you haven't seen.
00:23:50.800So I might get a picture of my old high school friend who had a child and oh, how cute.
00:23:55.820And it wasn't necessarily about getting likes and looks.
00:23:59.540It's just, hey, I'm updating you about my life, even to the point that like wedding announcements, funeral announcements were done on Facebook.
00:24:06.400I'm on Facebook still to remember people's birthdays and to get event invites because a lot of people used to use that as the way of getting invitations or birthday parties or even sometimes weddings, which is really odd.
00:24:18.860But the level that we have grown to is this genre of TikTok.
00:24:26.340You can do private and you can do small content, but it really is a race to see what can go viral and what can make money and what can get sponsorships.
00:24:35.800And it's changed vastly from what an elder millennial like myself knew it as to what it is today.
00:24:43.300But because people are learning things so fast or getting access to things so quickly, the etiquette has been kind of lost or lost in translation, perhaps.
00:24:53.280And it's become a point that for the Gen Zers and, I guess, newer millennials, younger millennials, baby millennials, have seen this as a norm and didn't realize until maybe just recently as the younger generations who've been on social media all of their lives since their birth have started to call it out that this was normal and a competition and a way of possibly making a living.
00:25:17.700and it's just kind of made this whole culture
00:28:03.340Like that's a big thing and it shouldn't be.
00:28:06.080As before, like there's a part of this like,0.99
00:28:08.160Yes, let the little women know so they can get out.0.99
00:28:10.640But it's also purely for entertainment, for the numbers, for the likes.
00:28:14.520And then as we see with these children, more and more shocking things that people think is okay.
00:28:20.880I know a YouTuber, as you were talking about, another YouTuber family, we talked about this recently, actually, in one of the episodes you came on.
00:28:27.620The couple adopted the child just for the sake of saying we're good people and adopted this child.
00:37:37.320I've had braids for most of my life when I was a kid.0.89
00:37:40.900Like a lot of Black women, my hair has been something that is like a complicated thing.1.00
00:37:46.740Like a lot of Black women have complicated feelings about their hair.1.00
00:37:49.220And I have many a memory of crying while getting my hair done, crying while getting my braids taken out or put in.
00:37:57.300And I remember quite viscerally what a vulnerable position that I was in in those times.
00:38:04.060I'm not saying that moms shouldn't do their kids' hair if they cry, but I'm saying I remember that being an emotional experience for me that I was very vulnerable in.
00:38:12.260And I think a lot of Black women know what I'm talking about.
00:38:14.080and so this child is sobbing while this while this is happening the mom is like everybody
00:38:20.860millions of people are going to see how you're acting right now and the little kid is like what
00:38:25.180do you mean and she's like I'm filming this and the little girl starts crying even more and she's
00:38:28.600like why are you filming this and her mom is like I'm filming it for a hair tutorial and even though
00:38:33.960this is a little kid she's pretty she's pretty sharp she says why don't you film a hair tutorial0.99
00:38:38.380on your own head. And it just broke my, like something, something about watching that video
00:38:43.300of like, I remember what it was like to be in distress. Now I'm not saying that was like a
00:38:48.500traumatic experience for her. Kids cry for all kinds of reasons all the time, right? We were
00:38:53.340all kids once we remember, but she's clearly in distress, even if it's temporary distress.
00:38:58.420And so her mom talking to the camera in this moment and being like, a million people are
00:39:03.180going to see this in the moment really just made me sad. And the mom was saying like, oh, well,
00:39:09.580like in the comments of this TikTok, she was saying like, well, I want to show other Black0.99
00:39:14.660moms out there how you deal with a stressful hair wash day. And other people who were supporting0.55
00:39:19.880her were saying like, maybe she's looking for a community of moms and wants to build community0.97
00:39:24.140and solidarity online. I could sort of see that. But ultimately, the number one responsibility of0.60
00:39:30.120a parent should be to create a safe environment for your kid. And all of this other stuff,
00:39:36.360like I can understand maybe sort of kind of wanting to demonstrate like, oh, here's how I,
00:39:41.700as a Black mom, get through a tough hair washing day. But those are strangers. Your responsibility
00:39:47.220when your child is in distress is to provide a safe environment for that child. Who cares about
00:39:52.600these strangers in your head that you are thinking about entertaining or whatever via this content?
00:39:59.340And that's kind of what I'm talking about, like how we reached a point where folks have kind of forgotten that your number one responsibility is to your child and to create a safe environment for that child, even if that means that this community of fictional moms looking for support might have to get it someplace else, right?
00:45:44.340You know, of course, I have to go real dark with it
00:45:47.120as you're being very kind and being like,
00:45:49.080Like these are not, they just really like these kids and they think the relationship is adorable.
00:45:53.680But here's a prime example of where we can talk about grooming and what happens when these relationships or these young kids become sexualized by the audience or by the followers and not necessarily being done by the parents.
00:46:11.120They may be completely innocent of it, thinking they're playing cute little dress up, matching mommy type of look, which is often a thing.
00:46:18.680But this becomes a real dangerous road of grooming and sexualization of young children.
00:46:25.700Just I know there was one specific woman who went through a young girl's accounts, meaning they were probably really young, maybe with a parent, showing what kind of followers these accounts had.
00:46:38.800And they were typically, for example, like middle-aged men commenting about how beautiful they were and how all these things are like, how good they looked in this outfit or all these things.
00:46:48.680and how concerning it is that the parents aren't realizing that compliment is not cute.
00:46:54.500It's not a cute compliment, and you shouldn't sit there and like them and say,
00:46:57.620thanks for supporting my child, which has been the response.
00:47:01.800And it is so dangerous when you see that this is becoming normal.
00:49:02.620some of whom are describing obviously sexualized,
00:49:06.500fictional situations involving her toddlers.
00:49:10.060And probably unsurprising, she was enraged and horrified.
00:49:15.240And I think, you know, there's so many different avenues to this.
00:49:19.140But one is that it's obviously a social media platform accountability issue.
00:49:23.960Katie Rose Pritchard said that she reached out to Instagram to have this content taken down.
00:49:27.880And then at first, Instagram told her that people making fake accounts of her kids and putting them in these sexual fictional situations was not against their community guidelines.
00:49:38.140But eventually she just kept having her followers report the content and Instagram did eventually
00:50:02.480She was like, I'll never know how far their pictures traveled, what dark corners of the
00:50:08.120internet her kids' images are on. And that is really scary. Yeah. And you know, just to add a
00:50:15.080wrench in this whole thing is with the ideas of deep fakes and AI technology, which takes straight
00:50:21.300from content from the internet, there are so many disturbing things that's out there, just knowing
00:50:26.800half of that and that being faked and what it's being used for. And again, there's no laws to
00:50:32.840truly stop this this is kind of like the freedom of speech as long as you're not violating that
00:50:39.400child and you're doing images that resemble and say this is not truly them all you have to do is
00:50:44.780alter something and it can't they can escape the law because there is no law for it and with the
00:50:49.820realization that once you put it on the internet there's no ownership true ownership as much as
00:50:54.840you would like to think there is there's no true ownership to the content that you are posting
00:50:58.720Yeah. To your point about deep fakes, Mom Uncharted on her TikTok has talked about, again, it's so dark that I hate to even go there, but there are marketplaces for deep fakes.
00:51:12.120People have been, like, here's an image of a person, not always an adult, sometimes it's a child.
00:51:19.420I would like to see digitally manipulated, like, AI-generated images of this child in sexual situations.
00:51:26.800That is a thing that happens, and I know that it is dark, and it's like, on the one hand, you feel awful when someone's, like, posting a cute picture of their kid being like,
00:51:36.000well, did you know that this could wind up on a marketplace on the dark side of the internet?
00:56:17.060I've even seen some of these accounts go so far as to sell images of, like, you want to buy a photo set of my daughter's gymnastic pictures or even buy their used clothing.
00:56:29.600Like, we know, like, we all see what's happening.
00:56:33.000They can hide behind, this is a modeling thing, you know, this is, you know, whatever.
00:58:30.980Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:58:40.040Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:59:43.240They have very, very specific labor laws, but the Fair Labor Standards Act, a 1938 law that addresses excessive child labor, and the California Coogan Act, which protects child actors, neither of those have been updated to include children online, like the children of influencers, children who are being used as content.
01:00:05.120And so it is definitely a situation where our technology has advanced quicker than our
01:00:10.580laws have, because there are currently zero laws in the United States that regulate how
01:00:14.420children work on social media and how they can appear in ads on social media that generate
01:01:24.120by requiring the parents of kid influencers
01:01:26.540to set aside part of that revenue from their content
01:01:29.580into a separate fund so that their kids can access them into adulthood.
01:01:33.280And it would also grant the children of influencers the right to request the permanent deletion
01:01:37.800of their likenesses, names, or photos from any internet platform or network that provided
01:01:42.960compensation to the individual's parent or parents in exchange for that content.
01:01:47.260And so platforms, under this new legislation, platforms would have to take reasonable steps
01:01:52.300to permanently delete video segments of such children.
01:01:55.460And that was one of the things that like in researching for this episode and reading the accounts of young people who were the used solely, like they were the sole focus of their parents' content.
01:02:07.300One of the things that they say is, I can't delete it from me.
01:02:28.000But I do think it's time that we really had our laws and our norms catch up with where we are technologically.
01:02:36.900And I think, you know, I think it's time.
01:02:40.760You would think that we would have learned through the child actor stuff of all the young actresses that had either their money stolen or gone through so much abuse.
01:02:49.400all those things that you would have thought we would learn from those mistakes0.94
01:02:54.460because some of these young kids making multi-millions of dollars.
01:02:58.660So you would think that with that kind of revenue, which is rare,
01:03:02.400but those are the ones who are getting the money are the younger kids at this point in time
01:03:06.800that we would actually find a way by now that would protect these kids
01:03:12.860because inevitably they're the ones who kind of bring it to as it is.
01:03:18.860Like we're not, it's not the older people who are creating these new things and new, new trends and new ways of communicating.
01:03:25.980It's the younger kids who are doing this and learning how to do it better and or being used for it.
01:03:33.700Like it's one of those things that like it should be for them.
01:03:36.960So why wouldn't it automatically protect them?
01:04:18.400I think I did see that he was on Cameo.
01:04:20.300But this doesn't have to be something that you, you know, make your entire identity and you're just a kid.
01:04:26.640You don't have to, you know, decide to go into internet, social media stardom, entertaining strangers because you had this one viral moment.
01:04:35.580And so that really heartened me to see that somebody in his life gave him the space and the language of being like, oh, yeah, I'm retired as corn kid.
01:08:46.680Stuff Mom Never Told You is a production of iHeartRadio.
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01:08:59.760I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
01:09:10.940what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. Every
01:09:16.960week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
01:09:22.340and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:09:27.540Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:09:35.920If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
01:09:41.680Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
01:09:49.460Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
01:09:53.480with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.