00:00:27.040That is a quick clip from the LeBrant family, the insanely, crazily popular YouTube family
00:00:35.560that has a gazillion views. Everything they post is real catchy. Once you start watching,
00:00:42.900you're not going to stop. See, after talking to the journalist for Tessa Latifi about medical
00:00:49.280influencers and what it means to post videos of sick kids, I got a little obsessed with learning1.00
00:00:56.860more about the LeBrants. You'll remember we talked about them in the last episode when we mentioned0.91
00:01:02.960a kid having a seizure and going to the hospital and the parents posting all about it on their
00:01:09.060YouTube channel. See, I was just sort of amazed that I had never heard of this wildly popular,
00:01:15.920like one of the most popular influencer families. They just never come up on my radar. We say this
00:01:23.160all the time. But it's because there's so many influencer families that you just you're never
00:01:30.460going to see all of them. But the LeBrants are among the most popular. I mean, their account0.99
00:01:35.700boasts something like 13 million subscribers. Their videos have gotten well over 100 million
00:01:43.160views. They are the classic influencer family. When you think about an influencer family straight
00:01:50.620out of central casting, you would probably pick them. They're very blonde. It's a very blonde,0.66
00:01:57.640very white, very, very, you know, how would I say this? How could I say this? Conventionally
00:02:06.600good-looking family. I'm going to tell you just a little bit about them because now it's in my
00:02:12.900head and it's going to be in yours. Sorry. Sorry. The LeBrant family consists of Cole and Savannah
00:02:19.640LeBrant. And they've got four kids, Everly, Posey, Zeeland, and Sunday. Savannah and Cole have been
00:02:27.960doing this since 2017, actually a little bit before 2017 when they first got together. Their wedding
00:02:33.560video went fully viral. And since then, they've filmed everything from the births of their kids,
00:02:39.680finding out they were pregnant with their kids, first days of school, hospital visits,
00:02:44.140all everything everything and they also weirdly seem to make a lot of slime
00:02:50.600yeah there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of slime making in their videos they've also had
00:03:13.220their fair share of controversies. Back when the wildfires were ravaging California,
00:03:19.920they posted a video called We Left Our House Because of the Fires in California,
00:03:24.700which made people very worried for them, as it should have. But it turns out they were nowhere
00:03:30.320near the actual wildfires. They just left their house because Everly has a fear of fires. And a
00:03:40.280lot of the followers that came to this video that saw this headline and clicked and were concerned,
00:03:46.220rightfully concerned, for the LeBrant family felt that they had been been duped, been duped that
00:03:52.240this was clickbait. And they've done this a couple of other times, too. We talked about this with
00:03:56.720Fortessa. They posted a documentary, which was just a really long video. Okay, can we not bastardize
00:04:03.140the word documentary here? But it was called She Got Diagnosed With Cancer. And it made it seem
00:04:09.160as if one of their children had been diagnosed with cancer. That was not the case. And a lot
00:04:17.900of people felt really tricked by that, too. On a more upbeat note, Everly, the daughter in all of
00:04:24.740this, just released a music video entitled Like Taylor Swift.
00:04:39.160And the song is catchy, and it's fun, and it's going viral right now.
00:04:58.220It got released earlier in September, like September 4th or something, and it is all
00:05:04.140over the TikToks. And it is clear that she is definitely, definitely following in her parents
00:05:10.700influencing footsteps, which got me to thinking, are the kids okay? Not just the LeBrant kids,0.64
00:05:20.040but the kids, the kids that are content, the kids whose lives are content. I think about them more
00:05:25.320than I should. I think about them. I mean, I don't think about them more than I think about my own
00:05:29.200kids, but I think about them a lot. And the problem is we haven't gotten to hear from a lot
00:05:35.140of the influencer kids because they're still young. But a generation of them is starting to come of
00:05:41.280age. And they are now talking about what it was like to have their entire lives put online. And
00:05:48.960spoiler alert, they're not okay. They're not okay. Some of the kids of influencers even want to
00:05:54.780disown their own parents once they turn 18. Because in a lot of cases, they feel like their
00:06:01.900lives have been ruined by having them put all out there online. I am here with a wonderful
00:06:13.700journalist for Tessa Latifi, who has written about this subject for Teen Vogue and for the
00:06:19.880Washington Post and she did an incredible piece for Teen Vogue that has completely stuck with me
00:06:26.520since I read it about the impact on children who can finally speak out about their parents
00:06:33.800essentially sharing their entire lives. How did this story come to you? I think like a lot of us
00:06:39.540as journalists just have these like weird pet interests and influencer culture and especially
00:06:45.200kids and mom influencer culture has always been one of mine and I think I don't know sometimes I
00:06:51.600wonder if it has to do with I'm 30 and I grew up watching like the 16 and pregnant kind of thing
00:06:59.640take off and so that was a documentary series on MTV that turned into Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2 and
00:07:06.960etc etc but like I just have always been so fascinated by like portrayals of like
00:07:13.160childhood and parenthood online and in the media and i don't know i'm kind of obsessed now with
00:07:20.900the idea that like there's kids who are who are reaching adulthood who has lived their entire
00:07:26.720lives either online or on camera you know whether it's mtv or whether their parents are the producers
00:07:32.500like this is a whole new way of living it really is and i love that you grew up with the teen mom
00:07:40.200franchise yeah because when i was a young journalist and covering celebrities i covered
00:07:47.060the teen moms and the 16 and pregnant so it's it's crazy to me that the the teen mom babies
00:07:52.880are now the same age as when their teen moms had them i know i know i'm sure some of them they've
00:08:00.440been on on tv this entire time you know like the cats have changed and so not it's not the case
00:08:07.620for all of them, but they have been in the public eye, you know, and they were literally born on TV
00:08:12.420like their actual births are broadcast on TV, like wild. And they became celebrities. These teen moms
00:08:20.120became celebrities. And I remember at the time that a lot of traditional celebrity journalists1.00
00:08:26.400and traditional agents mocked the phenomenon of the teen mom becoming a celebrity, but they did.
00:08:33.640they oh yeah like celebrities they made money from branded content and celebrity appearances
00:08:40.100and you know so so did their their kids uh at some point and i think now we're seeing influencers
00:08:50.220reach the level of celebrities as when we talked about this in in the last episode so i love that
00:08:57.900your fascination with influencing content started there because yes now influencers are the next
00:09:06.560generation of reality television stars and i think that journalists need to cover them the same way
00:09:12.420same way we would cover any celebrity who has influence who people people listen to because a
00:09:18.440lot of these people have more followers than your favorite indie movie actor yeah right yeah yeah a
00:09:26.340lot more people are listening to them so you did this story the headline of it is influencer parents
00:09:35.140and the kids who had their childhood made into content and the quote the quote that is right
00:09:42.880there under the head is haunting it's nothing they do now is going to take back the years of work
00:09:49.520i had to put in because make no mistake these kids that appear in influencer content they are
00:09:57.280working oh yeah they really are and so talk to me about talk to me about the woman who begins this
00:10:06.220this story her name her name is claire right yeah so i call her claire to protect her privacy
00:10:12.960because she's not yet 18 so she doesn't want to like come out with her actual name until she can
00:10:18.680not have to live with her parents anymore, which obviously is fair enough. Yeah, Claire has been
00:10:27.720on YouTube since she was a toddler. The first time she went viral, she was a toddler. And it was only
00:10:34.680like a few years later that her family's YouTube channel grew enough that her parents quit their
00:10:40.560jobs because it was, you know, kind of like the family business now. And that was that was keeping
00:10:45.080them afloat. And she has never really known a life that doesn't include a camera being pointed
00:10:50.200at her. Wow. That's a lot. What kinds of content were her parents making? Yeah. I mean, it was
00:10:59.760like kind of typical family vlogger content. So I just don't want to say too much because there's
00:11:05.660like so many sleuths out there who I really don't want to figure out like who she is. But I think
00:11:11.540one of the fascinating things about this was that like I was posting this story on TikTok and stuff
00:11:16.380and people were like guessing who she really is in the comments and like the sheer amount of
00:11:21.940possibilities of kids that she could be was like mind-blowing like it wasn't like there were like
00:11:27.440two or three guesses that it was like obviously one of these three kids like it was like it was
00:11:32.100like 25 kids that they were like hmm this fits this and I was like that's so wild wait back up
00:11:40.240back up back up so that part of the story is crazy to me that you write it's so meta is what it is
00:11:48.000you write the story and then there becomes a whole guessing game about who this young woman who
00:11:56.680to be fair should be able to have agency over her life and protect who she is because she was
00:12:04.160broadcast without her permission but then all of the commenters are desperate to find out who she
00:12:10.280is i know and some people are like oh my god this is totally going against like the heart of this
00:12:15.860story like she deserves like privacy like stop guessing and like i didn't like respond to anyone
00:12:20.520that was like guessing except to say like isn't it wild that there are so many options because i do
00:12:26.840think that's really fascinating to think about like okay a family vulgar family okay she's not
00:12:31.380quite 18 but she's like a teenager of some kind and like it just like oh just the like desire for
00:12:38.900people to like want to know everything about her even as they're reading about how she doesn't want
00:12:43.960anyone to know anything about her is like really wild like on tiktok people would be like i just
00:12:49.380can't wait for like the memoirs from like family vlogger kids and i was like yeah but they also
00:12:54.760deserve to like, just not be such a boss like I if that's what they want, if that if that's what
00:13:01.840they want. And maybe that's not what they want, because there will be a lot of money. There will
00:13:04.820be a lot of money in that market. And once the robots take over everything else that you can
00:13:11.020write, their story may still be their own. So if they can sell it good on them. Yeah, I know. I
00:13:17.580know. I guess we'll see. But it's just like, oh, it just bums me out. Like, I feel like even as
00:13:22.560were talking about like wow your parents made all this into content we're like give us more
00:13:27.320give us more and so all right the comments comments go wild and how does claire feel now
00:13:36.820you you wrote that if it were up to claire none of this would have happened none of these videos
00:13:41.780were existed and i can't help but feel that a lot of these kids who have their pictures taken and
00:13:49.800videos taken of them without their consent will feel the same way yeah i mean i'm trying to figure
00:13:56.560it out like if other kids do feel the same way or don't feel the same way so like just fyi to
00:14:02.880anyone listening my dms are always open i can i want to hear from you um but it's it's interesting
00:14:10.140right because they like this is just like a level of celebrity that we've never really had before
00:14:15.900Because I think the fascinating thing to me, I mean, one of the things about family vloggers and influencers is that like these kids are famous for being themselves.
00:14:24.200And like when I think about like celebrities when I was a kid, like, oh, Macaulay Culkin was like famous for being Kevin McAllister, you know, or like Hilary Duff was famous for being Lizzie McGuire.
00:14:34.160But they weren't famous for like their own like personalities.
00:14:39.520did that make sense like there was no boundary there's no boundary between like the influencer
00:14:43.900kid and their public persona exactly exactly these these kids are famous again not because0.94
00:14:52.340they wanted to be famous but just for being a toddler who maybe shits their pants yeah oh my
00:14:59.240god oh i just can't imagine like being able to like i don't know google your classmates like
00:15:06.320potty training habits right or we just in the last episode if you guys haven't listened to it
00:15:12.000go back we talked about medical moms on tiktok and instagram but we talked about the labrant family
00:15:19.340and how they made content out of their kids seizure and so when he's a teenager is he going
00:15:27.560to be seizure boy i don't know i don't know there's it's just hard because i don't i think
00:15:34.020like one of the like nice things about growing up is that you get to like leave parts of yourself
00:15:38.800behind like as you grow out of them but like it doesn't really feel like these kids will have that
00:15:45.280like quote luxury like because everyone can see everything about them from like pre-birth yes yes
00:15:53.440from pre-birth from i mean it's it's all out there you have no control over who you are um
00:16:01.600online or what strangers have have seen of you and that's who that's a lot that's a lot do you know
00:16:12.480did you ask claire if um if they've talked to their parents about this i i mean yeah i definitely
00:16:21.280did their parents know that they don't like love the youtube life and they did say to their dad
00:16:28.340once like um you know i don't really want to do this anymore i don't want to make youtube videos
00:16:34.100anymore and her dad kind of had this like response that was like okay well fine but you know we have
00:16:41.000to move out of this nice new house that we got and mom and i are gonna have to go back to work
00:16:46.400so you know you're gonna be like home by yourself after school or whatever and there's gonna be no
00:16:51.980money left over for like nice things and so it's like well is that really like a choice that you're
00:16:57.200giving them oh yeah if you if you don't let us keep filming your life for content we'll be poor
00:17:03.460and moving on our streets yeah you're like a child like obviously that really like hits you
00:17:09.080like and then obviously i think most kids want to please their parents so you want to be like
00:17:14.440oh no no it's okay i don't want to make you like go back to work or you know whatever yeah or i
00:17:19.020don't want to lose our house i'm so sorry oh god i know it's very heartstring tuggy is what it is
00:17:26.920and yeah i just i don't i don't think we know i don't think we have any idea what the impact is
00:17:36.380going to be on on on these kids and claire told you too that she's considering when when she
00:17:44.700finally turns 18 having no contact with her parents that she plans to speak out publicly
00:17:51.320about this and she may even use her real name uh but she wants she wants her parents to know
00:17:57.800like this is this is it she's she's probably gonna cut them off and that that is also a different
00:18:03.380kind of heartbreaking i know i know it's really sad i mean i think one of the things she said to
00:18:10.420me was that like she doesn't think that they have like a normal family dynamic like obviously
00:18:15.780she doesn't really know because she's only ever been in this one family but that like they talk
00:18:20.940about youtube all the time like it's like everything is very centered around like the
00:18:24.920business and like her dad tells her like i'm your dad but i'm also your boss and like it's just you
00:18:31.460know i mean it's just it's just terrible because she doesn't get to redo her childhood no we never0.97
00:18:38.220you're never gonna do over of your childhood and and to be fair all parents will fuck up their kids
00:18:44.320in their own unique ways pick your poison pick your poison even kids who are not on youtube
00:18:51.180and whose seizures have not been turned into content will hate their parents for something0.97
00:18:56.840everyone needs therapy no i yeah i was not a child youtube star and i was definitely fucked up by my0.97
00:19:04.420parents but this is a level of fucked upness that i actually think should maybe be regulated0.88
00:19:11.480like there should maybe be laws around this and we're gonna take a quick break and we will talk0.85
00:19:18.120about the potential for those kinds of laws when we get back so we we just talked about claire who
00:19:37.080was so raw and honest when you talked to them about how they really think their childhood was
00:19:44.240ruined by having to star in their parents' digital content. And now I want to get into
00:19:50.940the laws that could exist for child influencers, the laws that I think should exist because we've
00:20:01.660seen them exist for child actors. There is the Coogan Law, which has existed in Hollywood for
00:20:09.120a very long time, that says 15% of minors' earnings when they're acting in Hollywood
00:20:15.520productions must be set aside by their employer, their parents, in a blocked trust. But so far,
00:20:23.120there are not similar protections for child influencers. But we might see them soon. What
00:20:29.480have you seen on the political front that could be on the horizon to protect kids like Claire?
00:20:37.140Yeah, so it is pretty wild. First of all, there were like multiple decades, like arguably at
00:20:42.420least two decades into like influencing as a career. And we like still the only state that
00:20:48.440has a law protecting the earnings of child influencers is Illinois. And they just passed
00:20:54.900it like a couple months ago. Like it's literally brand new. And they're hoping that that's the
00:21:00.840Illinois government is hoping that this will be kind of like a model state for other states to
00:21:05.760follow. And I do know that other states are like looking into like, you know, doing the same kind
00:21:11.800of legislation, but federally there's nothing. And I mean, in 49 states out of 50, you're not
00:21:17.080protected. And the Illinois law is still hazy on how exactly kids are protected.
00:21:24.900Right. Well, I think the the wonder the issue is that we don't know yet like how it will be enforced.
00:21:33.640So I think the idea is that it's a safeguard and that if kids reach 18 and they learn that, you know, nothing was saved for them of the money that they helped make on this content, then they have like a legal avenue so they can say there's law against this.
00:21:50.620I can sue my parents, whatever. But like that's not a simple thing to do, you know, like hopefully
00:21:56.520parents will see this and like abide by it. But you I mean, you really just don't know. And that
00:22:02.380has nothing to do with, you know, the privacy issues or that kind of thing. So it I mean,
00:22:09.800it's a step forward, but it's so small. It's so small. It's so small. It is not a proactive law
00:22:16.020at all it's uh it's to me kind of post haste too like oh you have to endure all of the these years0.97
00:22:23.240of shit and then if your parents don't do the right thing maybe you could sue them but that's0.90
00:22:28.660also going to be hard yeah yeah i mean i don't know what would i don't know how kids will use0.99
00:22:35.380this then oh i mean it's only one state right like that's the thing that like is is really painful
00:22:42.960I think. And there are like other states that are looking into this, like California, Florida,
00:22:48.780Texas, Washington state. And advocates are like very pleased by this and see it as a very hopeful
00:22:55.520step. So I do think like, I do think maybe sometimes the first step is the hardest and
00:23:01.140like that first step has been taken. Yes, totally agree. And I want to see more of these steps and
00:23:08.280I will do everything in my very turny turny power to try to push this legislation and coverage of
00:23:16.280this legislation through because the influencing industry is only getting bigger and bigger and
00:23:22.120we're only going to see more and more children be exploited for content. I don't mince words when I
00:23:27.920say that. They are children. They are being exploited to work and for content for adults
00:23:32.520to make money and they deserve protection and the internet companies are not going to give it to
00:23:38.820them they're just they're just not but my other my other concern and this is something that you touch
00:23:45.380on so beautifully in the piece that you wrote for teen vogue is that these images and these videos
00:23:52.360of kids go out there and then they're also opened up to really nasty criticism online and the
00:24:01.980comments that people will write about children on the internet are disgusting and abhorrent and it
00:24:07.800makes me fear for humanity yeah it's pretty mean i mean like the internet is a mean place right so
00:24:14.720like putting kids into that like i don't know there aren't really like that many guardrails
00:24:20.200around it other than like basic human decency which like sometimes doesn't do anything so yeah
00:24:25.440i mean people are really mean to these kids or even if it's not like i don't know they just have
00:24:30.660so many theories and thoughts about them and is this one is this toddler who's on tiktok autistic
00:24:36.740because they're like obsessed with pasta right now and i'm like i'm pretty sure just like every
00:24:40.620toddler is obsessed with pasta but like it's just like millions of people just like pouring over
00:24:45.380your kid's life and being like you know taking every piece of it apart and then imagine being
00:24:52.180that 11 year old child going back and reading comments about yourself are they autistic1.00
00:24:59.880they're ugly they're stupid what's wrong with them and we wonder why this generation has so1.00
00:25:09.800much anxiety and so much depression because this can happen even if you're not an influencer1.00
00:25:17.880and it's certainly amplified if you have millions of followers because you know crazy is exponential
00:25:26.360in that case you're definitely going to have more nasty people i really can't believe how nasty
00:25:32.760these people are about kids like who is the person that decides to say a toddler is ugly
00:25:36.480on tiktok who is that person i don't know what is what is wrong with them just oh it's very strange
00:25:47.100Sometimes I think people are bad. But then these children have to read this. And anyone who posts any pictures of their kids, me included, I still do it, even though I took a lot of them off and I try to be better. We all try to be better, but still post more than I should.
00:26:06.100anyone can write nasty shit about our kids and then they'll go back and read it and read how0.99
00:26:12.040strangers commented on them and that is going to create even more anxiety for these children in0.99
00:26:19.620the future yeah i mean just it just seems like kind of a nightmare like even when like once in0.79
00:26:26.960a while my stories will like go viral or like a stupid tweet or something and people like
00:26:31.500go through my online presence and like screenshot pictures and be like oh my god like why are you so0.99
00:26:37.660ugly and stupid that's when I'm like 30 years old and it's still like kind of a bummer you know so0.98
00:26:43.020like I can't imagine being a kid and just being like wait why do all these people have an opinion0.98
00:26:48.380on me and like why did my parents let them yes why did my parents allow this essentially it is
00:26:54.740as if we were back in the middle ages and you just decide to parade your child into the public
00:26:59.560square and be like let the vow comment on them and then everyone starts hurling tomatoes and
00:27:07.140rocks at your kid that was a weird analogy weird i haven't i haven't had enough snacks today
00:27:14.780but yeah that's that's not good that's not good i'm gonna have a lot of snacks right after this
00:27:19.620good i want to end this episode on a bright note because we always we end on a lot of downers and
00:27:25.960And I feel bad because I want you guys to feel really good after listening to this show.