00:07:48.920And also all these girls on their own have millions of followers and subscribers.1.00
00:07:54.280Like they probably have near a hundred million altogether.
00:07:59.000So this is the side of child influencing that I start to get nervous about.
00:08:03.760i'm more nervous about this world than i am about most mom influencers whose kids appear
00:08:11.140intermittently in their content i am concerned about the kids who are very young who are becoming
00:08:18.940stars this young on social media and maybe i shouldn't be maybe that is just fuddy-duddy
00:08:24.280old-fashioned of me because kids have been movie stars and tv stars forever but putting a live
00:08:32.460stream of an eight-year-old's life and having them move into a house to create content that
00:08:38.320seems like a lot to me it seems like a lot all of these kids live in different states and so they're
00:08:46.020not gonna move into one house but they're gonna every few months stay together for a certain
00:08:52.360amount of time and do a bunch of content at that time so when i talked to taylor lorenz she was
00:08:57.140like they just want the label and the like valor and the prestige of being a content house without
00:09:03.720the actual difficulties of being a content house. So I find that really interesting.
00:09:08.900Wait, so they're not an actual content house?
00:09:11.500Well, it depends who you ask. They say they're a content house. But then when I asked someone
00:09:16.720like Taylor Lorenz, she was like, they're basically a collaboration group, but they're
00:09:22.120trying to say that they're a content house oh my god the semantics of this are are amazing so it's
00:09:27.960like once in a while they'll get together yes and they're calling this the sweet sisterhood yes
00:09:35.000all right so let's lay this all out for people who are completely unfamiliar with any of these
00:09:41.660people because these are megastar influencers but they are not people that i typically follow
00:09:48.020Yeah, I think that's what's fascinating about the influencer world is that even people like you and I who are so plugged in, like I, through like the research for my book, I will run into people with 10 million followers that I have never heard of before.
00:10:03.400Exactly, exactly. And I find a new influencer every single day. So let's go through this. It's called the Sweet Sisterhood. And between these people, how many people are involved?
00:10:15.960there are four fam no five families and nine girls okay okay and how many followers do they
00:10:25.240have collectively so i was doing the math earlier they are i mean each of them have
00:10:31.020like up to five to ten million each and that's just like on one on one platform so they have
00:10:38.420tick tock they have five million on youtube they have five million and that's only one family you
00:10:43.220know. So I think they're near probably 100 million subscribers and followers, which is insanely
00:10:50.080powerful. Right. The immediate thing that comes to my mind is this is just a brand collaboration.
00:10:55.500It's just bringing them together so that they can bring their audiences to each other. It's like a
00:11:01.480brand crossover in a way. Totally. Totally. It's like those posts on Instagram that are like
00:11:06.680collaborations. Like that's basically what it is. But the collaboration in a really big way.
00:11:29.960Yeah, and I think that's what's so interesting about, like, mom influencers and kid influencers is not, like, the parents are the producers.0.96
00:12:27.600We're talking to Teen Vogue journalist for Tessa Latifi.
00:12:30.220I just want to talk about cold hard cash.
00:12:31.900Do you have a ballpark of what these kids are making?0.99
00:12:35.280or rather what their moms are making off these kids i mean you can you can get into the millions
00:12:41.300like you can you can be making over a million dollars a year for some of these huge huge ones
00:12:47.140and even for the like mid-range ones you can make six figures you know and these are kids exactly0.97
00:12:53.020exactly which which is nuts now the moms in this house are they're they're defending themselves
00:12:59.060they're saying things like it's really just about empowering girls and uplifting them we can help0.95
00:13:04.200these young girls find a place to go where they're actually going to get good advice,
00:13:08.680wholesome role models they can look up to, stuff like that. Maybe that is true. But we also know
00:13:13.880that there are a lot of predators who look at content of these young girls. Yes. Yeah, that's
00:13:20.420true. And that is something that I think parents are becoming more aware of. And not only influencer
00:13:26.460parents, but even regular parents are putting their kids online less because they know that
00:13:31.440there are these predators out there. I mean, the New York Times did this like bombshell investigation
00:13:36.220where they found that pedophile groups were actually like looking to child influencers and
00:13:42.300finding that content and circulating it. And it's interesting because one of the moms also says,
00:13:48.900our kids know that they're a huge part of this business. Again, it's a business. Let's never
00:13:54.260think that it's anything but a business. But they also know it's important to us that they're happy,
00:13:58.760they're living a normal childhood, and that we're structured.
00:14:02.180We shoot content two days out of the week, and we move forward with life.
00:14:06.500I'm just trying to let that sink in for a minute, because that does sound very rational.
00:14:14.940And again, there are child stars out there, and there have been since the beginning of TV and movies.0.97
00:14:21.020Of course, there was that entire genre of show on VH1 about how fucked up child stars were.0.98
00:14:26.880Right. And I mean, we're still seeing that, right? Like, I feel like there's always the like downfall of this child star, like this child star is like bouncing back like Macaulay Hulkin has, you know, come back around. It's just like it's kind of dark.0.97
00:14:40.280The money aspect of this is very interesting to me, too, because what they're claiming is that the profits from their channel and brand deals will be split evenly five ways and that the moms will be in charge of distributing those profits.
00:15:07.780Yeah. I know that's then this that was in response to me asking, like, are there contracts like are they like, you know, how how explicit are these agreements?
00:15:16.020And they were kind of like, well, you know, we're we're just figuring it out and we're best to use and whatever.
00:15:20.860And, you know, I think everyone goes into situations like this or other agreements with friends with the best of intentions.
00:15:27.040But I mean, that's where things get get kind of hairy, you know.
00:15:30.740That's where I think things can get really hairy. Things are very complicated when when money gets involved.
00:15:36.920And so I think it's going to be really interesting to see how long this collaboration works.
00:15:42.840And I know Taylor Lorenz said the same thing, that collaborative groups often fall apart.
00:15:48.980I mean, it's very hard to get two people to do the same thing, much less five families.
00:15:55.760Yeah, much less nine kids, you know, and to like agree on the content and the direction of the content.
00:16:06.120And another thing that one of the moms said, and this one really stabs me right in the heart, because I'm terrified of the future for my children.
00:16:14.680I don't know what jobs are going to look like.
00:16:16.440I don't know what college is going to look like.
00:16:18.140Nothing is going to look like what it looked like for me.
00:16:22.540And so one of the moms said, my kid's brand is their future.
00:17:05.380But what is not that it's stable, but what is kind of this beacon of opportunity is social media viral stardom.
00:17:13.520And I think we all enter the viral lottery and some people win it and these kids have won it and their parents are trying to hold on to the winnings, you know, and to extrapolate from there.
00:17:23.760And it's just a good conversation to keep having because I am constantly trying to increase my personal brand.
00:17:29.720That is the only way I can sell books at this point.
00:21:13.480Right. And I think, I don't know, but it's hard to say with each of these kid influencers, like, which kind of kid are they? Are they a Charlie? And their parents are kind of coercing them? Or are they like your daughter? And they're just like, ta-da, you know what I mean?
00:21:32.320Right, right. And I don't know. It's really difficult because you make decisions when you're young and then you regret them. And that's why I don't have a tattoo that I got when I was 60. You know what I mean?
00:21:41.120Like, it's like, at what age can you decide that?
00:21:43.660I don't know the answer, but I think it's really complicated.
00:21:46.420And I just don't think that there's any value in, like, painting with a broad brush and being like, you're evil if you put your kid on the line.