Family vlogging is a fairly new concept. Filming your children for content in their most vulnerable moments of life, is seen as a good way to show others how to be good parents. No matter how you do it, it is not only harmful for the child, but also for the parents.
Family vlogging is most harmful to the children because it doesn’t allow them to grow up and make their own decisions. This being because they have already grown up in the limelight. If they are competing for a college scholarship or job, a background check will come up with titles of videos such as, ‘letting our kids turn 21 years old’ or ‘last to leave the bathroom wins $1000.’ Both of these are real titles of family vlogs from the channel The Norris Nuts with over 7.25 million subscribers.
It not only hurts the children, it hurts the parents as well. The parents’ vision becomes clouded by greed and validation. What probably starts as a harmless intention to show family and friends the best moments of their kids life, usually evolves to making harmful videos to get the most clicks from strangers. The greed comes from the want to make a living without working a nine to five, while getting to live a lavish lifestyle. People see how these family vloggers film for hours of their day in their million dollar homes. and can’t help but want that for themselves.
Something more harmful than greed, is the want for validation. Once those comments of ‘your kids are so cute!’ and ‘I want to be a parent just like you one day!’ start rolling in, parents feel the need to feed in more and more to the faceless mob that is their fan base. When they start to hear the concerned comments of people, who are trying to help their children, they are too busy chasing validation to listen.
“44.23% are aware of concerns about child exploitation in family vlogging… only 32.27% suggest reducing children’s exposure to family vlogs to ensure the safety of children,” RealResearch.com said.
Some fans of family vlogging wonder, what if the kids say it’s ok to film and post them? Some people believe that because the kid gives consent, that it is ok to put their life online. To that I say, would you ask a kid to pick out a new car or house for you, a life changing decision, because if they say it’s ok, does that really make it ok? Usually when an adult asks a kid permission to film them, they are too young to make logical decisions.
“Children 12 to 18 finally develop the ability to think systematically about all logical relationships within a problem,” Cincinnati Children Hospital said.
Most of these vlog families start filming their children before they are able to talk. For example, the Labrant family’s youngest child, Sunday Labrant, had an instagram account before she had even been on this earth for 24 hours. How can a child who can’t do more than cry to express what they want make a logical decision on whether or not they want their entire childhood online.
So what is the solution to this problem that seems too big to control? Well the simple answer is to continue to follow what others started. For example, most people have started to speak out on how harmful these vlogging channels are and are trying to stop them in their tracks. The best thing for people to do is boycott them entirely, so they don’t receive that ad revenue or comments that will push their video onto another person’s YouTube homepage.
The other solution, that even stars in Hollywood are taking on, is not putting children online in the first place. While they post pictures of their child, they cover their face and never post their name, so if they want to grow up without living in their parents shadow, they are able to.
I think both of these solutions are a very good answer to a problem that seems too big to tackle. If everyone takes on this responsibility, we can stop vlog families in their tracks and help these families grow to understand the importance of love over greed.
