Parents will have to set aside some earnings for child influencers under new California laws

By Trân Nguyễn, The Associated Press on September 26, 2024.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – Parents in California who profit from social media posts featuring their children will be required to set aside some earnings for their minor influencers under a pair of measures signed Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

California led the nation nearly 80 years ago in setting ground rules to protect child performers from financial abuse, but those regulations needed updating, Newsom said. The existing law covers children working in movies and TV but doesn’t extend to minors making their names on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

Family-style vlogs, where influencers share details of their daily lives with countless strangers on the internet, have become a popular and lucrative way to earn money for many.

Besides coordinated dances and funny toddler comments, family vlogs nowadays may share intimate details of their children’s lives – grades, potty training, illnesses, misbehaviors, first periods – for strangers to view. Brand deals featuring the internet’s darlings can reap tens of thousands of dollars per video, but there have been minimal regulations for the “sharenthood” industry, which experts say can cause serious harm to children.

“A lot has changed since Hollywood’s early days, but here in California, our laser focus on protecting kids from exploitation remains the same,” he said in a statement. “In old Hollywood, child actors were exploited. In 2024, it’s now child influencers. Today, that modern exploitation ends through two new laws to protect young influencers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms.”

The California laws protecting child social media influencers follow the first-in-the-nation legislation in Illinois that took effect this July. The California measures apply to all children under 18, while the Illinois law covers those under 16.

The California measures, which received overwhelming bipartisan support, require parents and guardians who monetize their children’s online presence to establish a trust for the starlets. Parents will have to keep records of how many minutes the children appear in their online content and how much money they earn from those posts, among other things.

The laws entitle child influencers to a percentage of earnings based on how often they appear on video blogs or online content that generates at least 10 cents per view. The children could sue their parents for failing to do so.

Children employed as content creators on platforms such as YouTube will also have at least 15% of their earnings deposited in a trust for when they turn 18. An existing state law has provided such protection to child actors since 1939 after a silent film-era child actor Jackie Coogan sued his parents for squandering his earnings.

The new laws will take effect next year.

The laws have the support from The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or, SAG-AFTRA, and singer Demi Lovato, a former child star who has spoken publicly about child performers abuse.

“In order to build a better future for the next generation of child stars, we need to put protections in place for minors working in the digital space,” Lovato said in a statement. “I’m grateful to Governor Newsom for taking action with this update to the Coogan Law that will ensure children featured on social media are granted agency when they come of age and are properly compensated for the use of their name and likeness.”

The new laws protecting child influencers are part of ongoing efforts by Newsom to address the mental health impacts of social media on children. Newsom earlier this month also signed a bill to curb student phone access at schools and ban social media platforms from knowingly providing addictive feeds to children without parental consent.

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